Three Wishes
by lastknownwriter
Summary: Dean Winchester returns from Zanzibar with a little something unexpected.
1. Chapter 1

_Sam,_

_Zanzibar sucks. _

_See you soon,_

_Dean_

...

Dean Winchester was not a sophisticated world traveler.

Stick him in his beloved car with some choice music and a full tank of gas, and he could drive for days, zigzagging across a multitude of states. There was _plenty_ to see and do back home in America, and _none_ of it required he get on a plane or keep track of his passport or eat weird food.

How the _hell_ Dean wound up in Africa was a real bone of contention between him and his younger brother, Sam.

Sam was an associate history professor at Kansas University, and seeing as his specialization was mythology, folklore, and religion, it would make sense that _Sam _might jet half a world away to an exotic locale. Say, for instance, to pick up a rare and obscure collection of tatty old books, exactly like the one Dean was currently watching a customs agent carelessly thumb through.

If Sam hadn't tumbled down a staircase three weeks ago, breaking an ankle and bruising his giant, floppy-haired ego (probably flirting with a TA at the time of the fall), then Dean would be happily ensconced under a 1970 Dodge Charger right now. He _would not_ be swallowing an unhealthy fear of flying for the second time in a week to make the exceedingly long return trip home. From Africa.

_Africa_.

Dean sighed. At least he was almost in the clear now. If by some miracle he survived the flight, he would be back in Lawrence, in his cozy little house on Poplar Circle, with an ice cold beer waiting for him at the Roadhouse, and a full month's worth of work waiting for him at the garage.

Winchester Restorations was Dean's baby. He had opened the auto body shop a little over five years ago, after spending much of his youth changing oil and rotating tires and tinkering with engines in Bobby Singer's garage. At first Bobby had merely tolerated him, assuming like most teenage boys Dean would outgrow his fascination with fast cars and move on to something more compelling, like chasing girls or tipping cows. (Lawrence wasn't exactly a mecca of extracurricular activities for teens.)

Oh, Dean had chased plenty of girls. But since he loathed livestock and preferred the smell of burning rubber to CK One, Bobby found himself with an apprentice on his hands more often than not. John Winchester, retired Marine and Douglas County sheriff, was surprisingly okay with his eldest son forgoing college for a trade career. He even paid for Dean's eighteen-month tuition at the Ohio Technical College, (i.e. muscle car nirvana), where Dean learned the intricacies of classic restoration before returning home slightly older, but vastly more mature, and ready to attempt life as a business-owning adult.

The business-owning part took a little longer than Dean anticipated. Banks expected things like _credit ratings_ and _business plans _before they forked over start up cash.

Dean just wanted to work on cars.

So, at twenty-five, he had found himself still changing oil and rotating tires and tinkering on engines with Bobby, with the occasional classic restore job coming in on the side. Word of mouth quickly spread about the kid in Kansas who could rebuild an engine from scratch and had a knack for hunting down original parts, though. A few years and a Bank of Bobby Singer loan later, Winchester Restorations was born, and became _the_ place to go if you had a classic car that needed anything from a little TLC to a full-body renovation.

Sam teasingly referred to the shop as _Grease Monkey Heaven,_ going so far as surprising Dean on his last birthday with a retro t-shirt, complete with a likeness of Dean's real baby (a 1967 Chevy Impala) sporting angel wings and a throwback logo. It had been a joke, but Dean secretly loved the shit out of that tee, and he had worn it all over town until it had subsequently become so popular that he now sold them at the register. (Dean was wearing a dusky grey one now.)

Meanwhile, Sam had fallen into academia and never clawed his way out. Currently, he was living with Dean (because apparently, as their mom was fond of bemoaning, they were entirely too codependent and were one day going to be little old men with a houseful of cats and _she_ was thus destined to a life without grandbabies. The older Dean got, the more Mary Winchester seemed to nag about her sons' shortage of offspring.)

It wasn't for lack of trying on Sam's part. The lanky fuck had a wide smile and sweet disposition that drove the underclassmen at KU crazy, and his _Arabic Folkore_ class had a waiting list that was shockingly long. Dean suspected this had less to do with the subject matter and more to do with his brother's freakish abs but whatever.

Dean, in the last few years, had taken to working out too, less because he was a nutritionist nutjob like Sam and more because he enjoyed his nightly beer at the Roadhouse and his jeans at some point after thirty had started tightening up around the waistband. Otherwise, Dean didn't waste much thought on his advancing age (Jesus fucking Christ, he was only thirty-four), _or_ babies, no matter how many pointed looks Mary gave him when a pretty girl walked into the shop.

Although he could admit he'd been having a dry spell the past several months.

Mary worked the register at Winchester Restorations a few days a week, sharing the job with Jo Harvelle, Dean and Sam's childhood friend and resident spitfire. _Her_ mother, Ellen, laid the blame for Jo's single status (and lack of babies) squarely on Dean and Sam, for essentially turning her into a boy during her formative years. This was a state of affairs that Dean was secretly proud of, although he would never admit as much to Jo. For one thing, she would kick his ass. For another, she would kick his ass.

Sometimes Jo slept on their couch.

Sometimes Dean superglued her fingers together in her sleep.

Jo was office manager, file clerk, and accountant, and she rode Dean's ass hard for everything from eating too much red meat to taking too long to buff a mirror shine on a '68 Camaro. She was pretty bossy for someone Dean wasn't even married to. (Dean had almost been married once, to a girl named Lisa, until she ran off with a state trooper who had wandered into her yoga studio looking for _back pain relief_. Yeah, right.)

Sometimes Dean mused that if he hadn't witnessed Jo awkwardly finessing her teenage years to the beat of N'Sync (unforgiveable), he might have considered moving her from the _sister_ column and into the _dateable_ column.

Then he came straight home from Crazytown on the express train, thankyouverymuch.

So, despite Dean's attempts at being independent, Winchester Restorations had turned into a family affair, and he was _still_ spending his days surrounded by the exact same people he had been surrounded by his entire life. Dean could live with that, even if occasionally, _very_ occasionally, he wondered what else there was for him. Whether life had any surprises lurking just around a bend.

Dean's homesick reverie was broken by the customs agent, who signaled he was finished going through his bags. Dean stood. _Finally._

He was going home.

…

The tall, slim figure had been motionless, leaning against the wall opposite the motel bed for hours, watching the occupant sleep.

His eyes narrowed when the resting man snored loudly, a rumbling, choppy sound that cut off on a snuffling murmur. A name, perhaps. Or a plea. The side of his mouth lifted in something very near a smile; maybe the man was having a nightmare.

He resisted the urge to take a peek inside his head and see for himself.

No, better to enjoy these last few vestiges of peace before the inevitable bullshit and fuckery prevailed and overtook the next several days, or _Allah help him,_ weeks of his life.

_Fuck_ he hated humans.

The sleeping man murmured again. "Sammy," he sighed into his pillow.

So it _was_ a dream. About a lover? _Interesting._

Curiosity got the better of him and he pushed off of the wall, moving close to the side of the bed, staring down at the face illuminated in a narrow strip of dawn as it bled through the window shades.

He frowned. The man was handsome, almost shockingly so, his square, masculine jaw finely stubbled. Girlishly long lashes fluttered against a lightly freckled cheek, the skin flushed pink with sleep. He wondered what his eyes looked like, what color they were. Blue? Hazel, maybe, with that dirty blonde hair.

The man sighed restlessly, his mouth parting as a breath escaped.

Just one touch, the observer thought absently, reaching out to brush his thumb across the full lower lip. The drag of skin on skin pulled the lip lower, revealing neat, white teeth.

Dean startled awake, blinking rapidly.

He scrambled out of bed, heart pounding, fist swinging, strangled shout cut off midstream by two things:

One, his right hook had been neatly trapped in the palm of the man standing beside his bed.

And two, the man's eyes glowed preternaturally blue in the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

"What—" Dean swallowed, heart racing, mouth dry. He yanked hard, but his fist was held fast in the other man's grip. "Who are you? How did you get in here?"

There was a pulse of energy in which Dean felt dizzy, disoriented, like maybe he was still sleeping and this was a dream.

The stranger's eyes were no longer glowing.

Maybe it had been a trick of the light.

Dean rubbed his fist, the knuckles sore as if he'd hit something entirely too solid, entirely too hard. He looked down at his hand in surprise, flexing the fingers, trying to remember the stranger releasing it.

"What the _fuck_ is going on?" he asked, taking a step back. His knees hit the bed and he dropped to the mattress on his butt.

He jerked when dark-haired stranger yawned and stretched, and it was then that Dean realized the man was wearing a pair of low-slung linen pants, drawstring tied in a neat bow, and nothing else. Not even shoes.

Dean shifted uncomfortably on the bed, thighs tense, preparing to bolt.

The figure moved closer and the air crackled, taut. He loomed over Dean, tight, sinewy skin and dark hair, and he looked like he'd been awakened from a very deep sleep and wasn't at all happy about it. His scowl was hard, those freaky eyes trained on Dean's face, flicking between his mouth and forehead. He lifted a hand and Dean flinched, glancing around for a weapon.

The stranger's full mouth parted in a grin at his reaction, and another buzz of electricity snapped through the room. Dean barely resisted the urge to scramble over the other side of the bed, mentally gauging his chances of making it to the door. "What are you?"

"Castiel," the stranger said and his deep voice sent a strange shiver down Dean's spine. "And I believe the word you seek is _genie_."

…

Dean's mouth opened and he squeaked a surprised, _"Fuck."_

Castiel shrugged, and Dean would have sworn he rolled his eyes. "A simple wish, but not uncommon." His hands made quick work of the drawstring and Dean squeaked again, hands thrown up in his haste, stopping just short of touching the creature.

"No! No, no, I," Dean stopped. _Goddammit,_ he was babbling and his heart was racing and _JesusfuckingChrist_ who just casually drops their drawers and _does that?_ "Leave your pants on," he said, grimacing when he realized how that sounded. "I mean, thanks, but. _What the hell are you talking about?"_

Castiel heaved a tortured sigh. _Humans._ So much for hoping this would be a quick one. He retied his pants.

"Genii. Djinn. _Genie?_" He cocked his head, studying Dean's blank face with abject boredom and, Dean thought, what looked suspiciously like disgust. "You _can _read, right?"

Dean huffed, face flushing in anger. "Of course I can read. What does that—" He stopped when Castiel produced a slim volume from thin air and held it in front of his nose. He took it hesitantly. "_Aladdin and the Magic Lamp," _he read aloud. He looked up at the stranger incredulously. "No. Not possible." He threw open his arms in a show of bravado, hoping the man couldn't hear his heart pounding. "Do you see any lamps here?"

He shrank back when Castiel reached forward, freezing when he laughed, low and dark. The deep rasping sound hit Dean right in the groin and a liquid heat began to spread through his bones.

Which was about a dozen levels of disturbing.

Castiel's hand hovered over the gold charm hanging from a thin, dark cord around Dean's neck, before sliding along his bare skin, wrapping the silken thread around a finger.

Dean stilled.

"How did you come to possess this?"

Dean pulled the cord from his grasp. "It's not a lamp," he protested weakly, brain scrambling to make sense of what was happening. He had read many legends and folklore about the _djinn_, of course, his brother was an expert in the weird and unusual. Sam had insisted Dean read _a lot_ of things before he made the trip to Tanzania, both practical and fantastical.

Castiel _definitely_ rolled his eyes. "Are you always this simple?"

Dean blinked. "Are you always a bastard?"

"Yes." Castiel's eyes flashed, a hot spark of color in the dusky room. "Tell me where you purchased this." He pointed at the charm, but he didn't move to touch it again.

"I didn't," Dean bit out, taking a chance and scooting off the bed to stand beside the man. _There._ He was slightly taller, and broader, but for some reason that didn't give him the sense of security he had hoped it would.

For one thing, the man, _Castiel,_ apparently had no concept of personal space and moved closer, wholly unintimidated. Dean sucked in a quick breath; he could _feel_ the heat coming off his skin, and something else, something—

"It is a talisman. It protects the wearer from—" Castiel stopped, his voice flat. "Remove it."

Dean huffed a laugh. "Ahh, I don't think so." He willed himself not to react to the instant snap of current lifting the hair on his arms.

"You acquired something on your recent trip to Africa."

"I _acquired _a lot of things," Dean retorted sarcastically. _Six feet, maybe less, and he could be at the door. _He wondered how much damage he would inflict if he whacked the creature in the head with the small book.

Losing patience, Castiel lowered his chin, gaze narrowing between Dean's eyes. "How did you come to possess my vessel?" he growled.

"I bought it, as part of a collection for my brother." Dean blinked. He didn't know why he said that; it was if his mouth moved without his brain's permission. He frowned. "How'd you do that?"

Castiel sighed inwardly. _Damn._ He could only coerce if the holder was unaware. So much for gleaning any more information out of this one.

_So close. _

"Wait a minute," Dean murmured. "Your vessel?" His handsome face was transformed with a delighted grin. "You mean_ I_ get three wishes? Hot damn!" He tossed the book to the bed, rubbing his hands together. He paused and then held one out between them. "Dean Winchester. I think this makes me your new master."

Castiel stared at the extended arm, unmoving, before slowly raising his eyes to Dean's.

Dean patently ignored the ribbon of ice that whipped around his spine.

"Not exactly," Castiel said drily.

Dean dropped his hand self-consciously. "What do you mean, _not exactly._ In _that,_" he pointed to the discarded book. "Aladdin got three wishes. What do I get?"

"You get to live, for one." Castiel waved a hand dismissively in his direction, yawning wide again. "Get out of my way, if you please." He crawled into the warm indentation Dean had left in the sheets.

Dean sputtered. "What—what are you doing? I—who—"

"Yes, you're quite eloquent and obviously vastly cultured. Now please shut up, it's a dreadfully long journey from Zanzibar to," Castiel squinted at the red numbers on the clock beside the bed. "Where are we?"

"Wichita," Dean muttered, crossing his arms. "_Kansas. _The state of?" He shifted his weight, but the man's eyes remained stubbornly closed. "Hello?"

"This is me ignoring you."

Dean's mouth worked furiously. "I'm your master, you're supposed to obey me. I command you to get up."

One intense blue eye popped open. "I would advise you take care with your words. You tire me with your stuttering. I will rest and speak to you in three hours. I prefer eggs to break my fast."

Dean blinked. He was standing in the motel parking lot, car keys in hand. He looked around him, but there was no one else in the lot, and traffic buzzed on the road behind him.

He had just been zapped out of his bed and motel room by a _genie._

His stomach growled and he patted his hip. A genie who had dressed him in his favorite jeans and conveniently put his wallet in his back pocket so he could buy breakfast.

"This better not count as one of my wishes, " he muttered, yanking open the door.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean turned the key in the lock, holding his breath as he pushed into the room. The white takeout bag crackled in his fist as he clutched it against his chest and peered into the dark. He threw up a brief prayer that he had just had a very vivid dream, but would find the room empty, no sign of—

_Nope_.

The genie, (_Castiel,_ he thought ruefully), apparently had no concept of _his side_ _of the bed_ and was sprawled on his stomach diagonally on top of the sheets. His dark hair was a mess, and his face was buried in Dean's pillow.

And he was naked.

Dean swallowed, eyes darting to the white linen pants lying in a pile on the floor, and then back to a very well-formed posterior. _Well, fuck. _

"Stop staring," Castiel mumbled into the cheap cotton pillowcase.

"I'm not," Dean protested, immediately looking anywhere but at the expanse of tan skin on top of his bed. He squeezed his eyes shut. That seemed safest. "I wasn't," he said again.

Castiel sighed heavily and the bed creaked as he moved. "You are obtuse. And an abject liar. These are facts that will play well in my dealings with you."

"I am not," Dean declared hotly, eyes popping open again before darting away; Castiel had flipped to his back, not bothering to cover his nudity with the sheet.

"You're lying again." Castiel sat up and held out a hand. "I require sustenance."

Dean thrust the bag in his direction, taking care not to allow their fingers to touch. "I'm going to take a shower."

Castiel was unwrapping an egg biscuit, humming in approval at the first large bite. "Don't use all the hot water," he said around a mouthful of egg.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Dean retorted, slamming the bathroom door, pointedly ignoring the flake of buttery crust that had fallen from the genie's bottom lip, landing on his thigh.

His _naked_ thigh.

Dean turned on the water and sat on the toilet, head in his hands.

…

He jumped when the shower curtain was ripped aside.

A large blob of creamy suds fell into his open mouth and he spat. "Goddammit, Cas."

"Castiel," the genie corrected calmly, stepping over the rim of the tub and pushing Dean to the end. "I expressly forbade you to use all the hot water."

"I'm not!" Dean sputtered, eyes helplessly trained on the water that clung to the other man's back as he scrubbed his hair under the hot, needling spray. One fat, round drop ran over a shoulder blade, then down the center of his spine before disappearing between—

"Shampoo." Cas flipped neatly around and held out a hand.

Dean shoved the travel-size bottle at the man he was apparently showering with, and tried desperately not to drop his gaze any further than his stubbled chin.

"You can look." Castiel said calmly, squeezing a dollop of the liquid in his palm and then applying it to his dark hair. He worked the strands into a thick, white lather, his strangely-hued eyes trained on Dean's tense face. He grinned suddenly. "You are an interesting creature."

Dean scowled, and began to soap his hair again, mimicking the genie's movements. "No I'm not."

"Yes. You actually are." Castiel chuckled, startling Dean when he reached over to catch a fast-moving bubble before it snaked past an eyebrow. "Would you like to touch me?"

"What!" Dean jerked, slipping on the smooth wet floor of the tub, ripping the shower curtain from its hooks as he tried to brace his fall.

Castiel turned around, lifting his face into the spray. "You can, if it would rid you of this fascination with my body. We have work to do and I don't have time for silly infatuations."

Dean untangled his limbs from the useless vinyl curtain, wincing as errant shampoo stung his eyes. "Pass," he ground out.

"Very well," Castiel shrugged. He stepped onto the skimpy white bathmat and took the last towel from the metal shelf above the toilet before sauntering out of the bathroom.

"And I'm not fascinated!" Dean called. He shivered when the water turned cool. "I'm not," he muttered, and finished rinsing his hair.

He made quick work of his teeth and wrapped the towel he had used the night before around his waist. He was caught up short at the figure standing in front of the television. "Those are my clothes!"

Castiel flipped through the channels aimlessly. "Very astute. Your powers of observation are showing a marked improvement."

Dean ground his teeth together and dropped the towel defiantly. He dug through the duffle bag on top of the bed, jaw clenching when he realized the other man was also wearing his favorite t-shirt. "That was my last clean shirt," he grumbled.

"I have an aversion to untidiness." Castiel tilted his head, eyeballing the live, swirling, satellite imagery of a hurricane off the coast of Florida. He flicked an index finger at the screen before turning to watch Dean dress.

Dean flushed self-consciously. "Don't mind me, standing here naked and all, Cas."

"You are not displeasing." Castiel said matter of factly, scratching his jaw. "Why do you insist on calling me that?"

Dean wished his dick would behave for _one goddman minute_ so he could shimmy his pants over his hips before the stupid voyeuristic asshole across the room spotted the half-hard state he was sporting below the waist.

"We should have had sexual relations in the wash room," Castiel stated perfunctorily before turning back to the TV.

"_And in a strange turn of affairs, the storm has made a miraculous shift to the east. It appears now that it will miss the coast entirely…"_

"What did you do?" Dean asked, blushing hard at the mental image flooding his mind at the genie's words. _Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. _ "And no, we really shouldn't have."

"You are aroused. It will interfere with your concentration as we move forward on this journey." Castiel shrugged. "And I have done nothing."

"You did," Dean insisted, scraping a tee over his head and blatantly ignoring the first part entirely. "I saw you point your finger at the screen and do some mumbo jumbo flicky thing." He snatched a pair of socks from the duffle. "Was that one of mine? Did you just waste one of my wishes because I refused to fuck you in the shower?"

"_I_ would have been fucking _you,_" Castiel corrected with a small smile. "But, I would have allowed you to enjoy it."

Dean swallowed at his gravelly tone, sock half on, dick pulsing hard at the genie's casual display of dominance. "Is that a yes or a no?" He ignored the tremble in his voice.

"This storm has nothing to do with you, Dean Winchester, regardless of whether or not you have three wishes."

"That's not an answer _Cas,_" Dean spat, zipping his duffle with a hard swipe.

"You will escort me to your home now." Cas strode from the room, shoulders thrown back, eyes glowing, the set of his jaw the only indicator Dean had that he had been affected one iota by their exchange.

Dean scanned the room for the any missed belongings and tossed the room key on the TV stand, wondering how the hell he was going to explain Cas to Sam. "Oh hey, Sam," he muttered. "Guess what I bought us in Zanzibar? A genie!"

He tossed the duffle's strap over his shoulder. "Yeah, that's gonna go over just super."


	4. Chapter 4

Dean unlocked the front door, stepping aside to let Cas enter, glancing back when he realized he was alone on the concrete porch.

The genie was midway between the car and walk, eyes narrowed disapprovingly on the roofline. "This house has not been blessed."

Dean dropped his duffle with a long-suffering sigh. He had never regretted his cheapass tendencies more than he did right now, post three-hour car ride with a sarcastic being of questionable intent. Next time Sam told him it was cheaper to fly out of Wichita, Dean was going to shoot him. "And?"

Cas' eyes were dark and unreadable. "I cannot enter. You will procure a priest." He stalked back to the Impala.

"A priest? What the hell are you talking about?" Dean gritted his teeth when the car door slammed. "And since when are genie's Catholic?!" He kicked the duffle bag at his feet and considered leaving the infuriating asshole in the car for the night.

Next door, Mrs. Murray stepped out on her porch to water her plants.

Dean winced when her gaze faltered on his car; there was a faint blue glow coming from the smoke-filled interior.

He fumbled for his cell. "Goddamn, willfully disobedient, fucking hot as hell ancient being of –" he finished punching numbers and brought the phone to his ear. "Sam? Get over here."

…

Any other time and Dean would probably find Sam's open-mouthed astonishment hilarious.

"What is he?" Sam breathed, circling the car at a safe distance, his crutches leaving little round indentions in the dirt.

"A pain in my ass." Dean figured he was about one tooth grind shy of permanently eating soft foods and mentally relaxed his jaw.

Sam was veritably _twitching_ in excitement, wiggling his fingers in a shy little wave at the figure in the car.

"Sam!"

Sam jumped. "What?" He bounced on one heel. "Dean, if you're right and it's a _djinn,_ do you know what this means?"

"Yeah," Dean squeezed the bridge of his nose, willing away the desire to plant his fist in Sam's perky snout_._ "It means I'm never going to sleep in my own bed again if you don't _find me a goddamn priest."_

…

Missouri took one look at Castiel and refused to leave her car.

"Missouri. _Come on_!" Dean threw up his hands in disgust, glaring at Sam, mentally shooting him a message: _you deal with her._ He stomped back to the porch where Cas was studying a patch of daffodils that must have sprung up while Dean was away.

"So, uh—"

Cas bent over to pluck one of the yellow blossoms, peering at the petals curiously. "I grow weary of the sparsely decorated grounds of your home." He straightened. "And I require sustenance."

Dean stared at him in consternation. "You ate not two hours ago. Why don't you," he wiggled his fingers in Cas' face. "Do your finger flicky thing and conjure us up a Billy Bob's Short Rib Special."

Cas tilted his head and squinted. "Your histrionics are vexing."

"For fucks sa—" Dean bit his tongue. _Hard._ "Cas," he said evenly. "Missouri is scared shitless of you. She won't bless the house until you get back in the car. And if she doesn't bless the house, you won't go in, and if you won't go in, I'm going to shove your _'vexing'_ ass in the trunk and be done with you!"

God help him but he air quoted.

Cas studied him wordlessly for a sweat-inducing beat.

Dean held his ground and seriously considered begging. He had to pee. He had just opened his mouth to plead when Cas spoke.

"I will get in the car." He dropped the flower and stalked across the yard. "But that woman is no priest," he threw over his shoulder.

Dean winced when he slammed the Impala's passenger door _again_. "Well, she's the best we've got," he muttered and gave Sam the all clear. He could hear Missouri bitching the second she climbed from her tiny green car. Sam's head was bobbing, and judging by the size of Missouri's eyeroll, Dean suspected he was using his soothing professor voice on her.

He swallowed a grin before she stalked past, too slow to dodge the smack she judiciously applied to the back of his head. "Ow, Missouri, Jesus."

"And just what in Sam _hell_ were you thinking?" She rounded on him and he ducked behind the actual Sam.

"I didn't do it on purpose," he muttered. "And what about _him_? He sent me there for the damn books in the first place!"

"Well, I like that. Throwin' your poor, defenseless brother under the bus like he's yesterday's fish sandwich."

Dean clamped his lips together. He knew from experience when to keep his mouth shut around Mama Mosely; she had the same look she had had when he was ten and wrecked his bicycle in her rhododendrons. Six band aids and four chocolate chip cookies later, he had spent the remainder of a hot July afternoon on his hands and knees in that damn flowerbed, while Sam and Jo went to the city pool.

Silence was apparently the correct response, because Missouri _hmphed_ and practically floated up the steps, her silky vest flowing out behind her, long, black fringe dancing.

Dean scowled at his brother. _You shut up, this is all your fault._

Sam grinned and swung his crutches in the direction of the porch.

Once inside, Dean hovered by the door (where he could keep one eye on his stowaway), and waited for Missouri to chant or spray holy water, or do something suitably mystical so he could goddamn go pee.

"Boy, don't tell me you haven't been wooing your lady friends with scented wax and box wine. You find me some candles," Missouri barked.

"I have not!" Dean sputtered, shooting daggers at Sam, who was lounging on the sofa with a big dumb grin. "Watch the car," he grunted, stomping into the kitchen.

"And bring me a glass of sweet tea!" Missouri ran her hand over the dusty fireplace mantel and grimaced. She aimed a dirt-smudged fingertip at Sam. "You dust and vacuum every week, Samuel Winchester, just like I taught you."

"Yes ma'am," Sam nodded solemnly.

Ten minutes later, Dean's bladder was crying, Sam had drunk the last beer, and his entire fucking house smelled like a funeral parlor.

Missouri tucked something that looked vaguely like a cornhusk doll behind Sam's baby picture on the mantle and nailed Dean in place with a glare. "This will be the thing that eats you alive, not that I expect you to start listening to me at this point in your damn fool life." She gathered up the rest of her trinkets and jammed them in her bag, muttering under her breath. "Just like your daddy, two sheets to the wind and you'd bed the first hooker what's got all her teeth."

Dean slapped a hand to his forehead. "It's a _genie_, Missouri, not a prostitute." He lunged for a cackling Sam who managed to both dodge and shove a throw pillow in Dean's face. "And _nobody is bedding anyone!" _he practically shouted, beaning Sam with the square of plaid tapestry.

"Hmph," Missouri huffed again. "Well, you stink of sex."

Dean choked, grappling the neck of his tee upward and inhaling deep. "I do not! It's the goddamn candles!"

Missouri crossed her arms. "If you don't end up with two horns and a tail, I'll eat my best Sunday hat." She had the same look on her face she used to get before she made him pick up rocks, so Dean reverted to the time-honored adolescent tradition of whining.

"Come on, Missouri," he wheedled. "Think of the—"

"He's an abomination," she interrupted with a dismissive wave, before hoisting her bag over her shoulder and sailing out of the house in a flurry of silk.

"Arghhh!" Dean ground his palms against his eyebrows, willing the sudden and violently pounding headache away. He ignored Sam's snickering entirely and went into the kitchen to swallow a couple of aspirin before he fetched the genie. _Just one moment's peace._ At the sink, he stared out over the sparse backyard, chasing the bitter pills with a full glass of water. A tire swing hung from the central-most tree, and if he were honest, it was the only reason he had bought this house. He had envisioned pushing a little boy or girl, higher and higher, bright laughter filling the small fenced enclosure. As the years passed, he hadn't had the heart to take down the swing. It swayed now in the breeze.

In the living room, he stopped cold. Cas was seated beside Sam on the couch, calmly flipping through Dean's brand new Busty Asian Beauties. He could feel the heat climbing his neck and he sent up a fervent prayer the magazine hadn't been on the coffee table when Missouri was blessing the house; if it was, she was probably already on the phone with his mother.

"Your brother is charmingly intellectual," Cas offered easily. He glanced toward the center of the room, where Dean stood transfixed in mortification. "Were you perchance adopted?"

Dean knew if he bit his lip _one more time_ to keep from saying something he would probably (mostly) regret, he was going to chew through his damn cheek. "I'm going to pee." He threw Sam a warning glare. _Don't leave him alone_.

He had just finished, groin _tingling_ with relief, when the genie appeared at his elbow without warning. He was almost proud of the way he caught the shelf of toiletries before he knocked it off the wall. He yanked up his zipper, twisting away in an awkward hunch. "For Christ's sake, Cas, we talked about this in the gas station. The bathroom is private!"

"You should take more care to hydrate."

"And stop checking my pee!" Dean flushed the toilet, the handle clanging with his hard swipe.

"Hydration is key to optimum health," Cas shrugged. He silenced whatever Dean was going to say next by reaching over and rubbing a thumb across his bottom lip. He hummed absently at the contact.

Dean held his breath, unsure if the hairs on his arms were standing on end from the brief contact or the electricity that suddenly deluged the tiny bathroom. His senses were overflowing with toothpaste and lavender and fresh cut grass, but there was something else, a note above all the rest that he couldn't identify.

It smelled incredible.

"What was that for?" He had to clear his throat to force the words out.

"Your lips are chapped." Cas narrowed his eyes. "You will drink two glasses of water immediately."

"I'd rather have a beer," Dean muttered, shaking off the strange sensation and stepping around the genie to wash his hands. But he filled a small tumbler and drank the contents in two swallows. When he turned around, the genie's gaze was warm on his face; not a smile, but close.

"I am due a rest, and thus will bid you adieu." Cas' voice was husky. "Your intelligent brother has generously offered the use of his private quarters for the duration of my stay."

Dean licked his lips self-consciously. "He's not really that smart, he's just a bookworm." God help him, but he couldn't resist glancing down, Cas wearing Dean's ratty jeans and soft tee somehow more alluring than when he had been naked. One look and every nerve ending in Dean's body followed suit, shifting impulses downward, pooling between his legs. He studiously avoided the tub, but the memory of the morning's shower bloomed hot and fast, not helping the situation in Dean's pants. Apparently the genie had no such qualms, though, because he leaned still closer until Dean was trapped, that _scent_ enveloping him, the pedestal sink at his back and the flimsy hollow-core door the only barrier between them and his stupid, nosy, big-eared brother.

"Your jealousy is unwarranted," Cas murmured.

"I'm not jealous," Dean gasped, swallowing frantically when the genie grazed the back of his knuckles down his fly. His hips ached to swivel into the touch, seek relief from the blessed tension coiling tight in his gut. It sank into his dick and throbbed for release, and he had half a mind to shove Cas into the wall and mindlessly rut against his (very toned) leg. He only refrained because, he reminded himself, he actually kind of hated the bastard.

"I am not opposed to relieving you of this-" Cas scratched under the zipper flap and Dean moaned pitifully, grabbing the sink behind him for leverage. "It will require careful negotiation with your brother in such close proximity, but I am adept at many… methods."

Dean sucked in a breath and held it, a gloriously Technicolor vision of Cas and his many _methods_ bouncing around his brain like a pingpong ball.

"I will admit your willingness is a pleasant, if unexpected, turn of events," Cas murmured approvingly.

"Shut up," Dean hissed, torn between kissing the asshole and socking him in his fat, luscious, delicious-looking mouth. His hips twitched, pitifully compliant, when Cas toyed with the button at his waist.

"I do harbor some concern that you possess a questionable wash room fetish."

"Dean?" Sam rapped sharply on the door. "Everything okay in there?"

"Fine!" Dean blurted, gulping deep, cleansing breaths when the finger that had been rubbing his inseam disappeared, along with the genie in a cock-teasing puff of blue-tinged smoke.


	5. Chapter 5

Cas watched the human's forehead draw tight and relax, dreams flickering behind his eyelids. The man mumbled in his sleep and the hand on his pillow fisted.

Dean thrashed suddenly, the bedclothes sliding from the bed and pooling on the floor. He murmured again, a name Cas couldn't catch, before his breathing shallowed, chest rising and falling in rapid succession, his heartbeat audible to the genie's sensitive ears.

_A nightmare._

Cas glanced at the closed door; it would be so easy. The brother slept down the hall, unaware. The house was dark, silent but for the troubled man in front of him. He watched Dean sleep fitfully for several long seconds before pushing off the wall, stopping beside the bed to stare down at the handsome figure. He grazed a finger along a bare bicep and the muscle flexed under his touch, firm and strong. Dean shifted restlessly, exhaling a faint curse, so he touched the pad of his thumb to the center of his full mouth, the barest hint of touch. _Shhh._

Dean settled immediately, and Cas smiled.

…

The alarm clock was trying to kill him.

Dean groaned and fumbled for the squealing plastic box of death. It fell to the floor with a _thump, _rolled under the bed, and kept right on buzzing. "Fuck," he muttered, rolling up on an elbow and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He started, yanking the sheet to his neck when he spotted a figure by the window. "Jesus Christ, Cas! You scared the shit out of me."

"And your first reaction to an intruder is to cover your nakedness like a virgin?" Cas asked drolly, silhouetted in the early dawn light.

Dean's heart was still hammering to beat the band, but a telltale blush bloomed across his cheeks when he remembered the scene in the bathroom. He dropped the thin cotton and rolled over, reaching for the alarm clock. "How long have you been watching me, anyway? That's not creepy at all."

Cas shrugged, the movement disconcertingly human. "You spoke my name in your sleep. It called to me."

"It?" Dean sat up. "What?" He watched the genie step forward out of the shadows, and sucked in a breath when he realized he was naked. _Voyeuristic, shameless, fucking hot bastard._

"Your desire." Cas stretched languidly and God help him, but Dean couldn't quite convince himself to wholly avert his eyes.

His entire body flushed when Cas' words caught up to him. "I don't have any desire," he shot back stubbornly. He stalked to his dresser and rifled around in the drawer for a t-shirt. He yanked the first one he found over his head and bent over to swipe a pair of discarded jeans from the floor. His fingers were stiff and fumbly as he tried to do up the fly under the genie's watchful—_naked—_gaze. "Are you always like this?" he asked waving a hand to indicate Cas' unclothed state. He shoved his hands through the armholes, needing the coverage more than he wanted to admit.

"Why? Do you prefer the paper women?" Cas was leaning against the bedpost now, one foot crossed over the other.

Dean was ninety-six percent sure he was fucking with him, casually displaying his body just to keep him on edge, but damn if it wasn't working. "Shut up," he ground out in a delayed response.

Cas yawned. "You display an inordinate fondness of that expression. Might I teach it to you in another language?" He scratched his chin absently before turning his palm up flippantly. "For variety?"

Dean's mouth opened and then slammed closed. _Dammit._ He frowned when Cas' eyebrows drew together, the genie's gaze focusing on his neck. "What?" He rubbed the skin under his chin self-consciously. "Are you fucking with me again?"

Cas pushed off the bedpost. "I've already explained my stance on _fucking_ with you," he said drily, not stopping until Dean could smell him.

Dean held his breath.

Cas pointed. "You have managed to injure yourself. While safely ensconced in your bed."

His sardonic tone set Dean's teeth on edge and he swiped at his neck, prepared to deny—"Ow." He whirled around to peer into the edge of a silver picture frame on top of his dresser. A dark mark winked back at him, just above his collarbone.

"I could…" Cas reached for him, and Dean whirled away.

"Oh no, don't you finger flicky me. Knowing you, I'd end up with a goiter the size of a softball."

"Suit yourself," Cas laughed darkly. "Please do appear before your brother with the mark of a well-spent night." He gave him a tiny salute before sauntering—_naked—_from the bedroom.

"Wait!" Dean hurried after him. "Goddammit, Cas," he whispered frantically, glancing both ways down the hallway, just catching a nicely rounded cheek turning into the kitchen. _Dear God, don't let Sam be up yet…_

"Look, you gotta—" Dean drew up short. Every surface in the kitchen was covered with cardboard containers of salt, dozens of jaunty, umbrella-holding girls smiling back at him.

Cas stood inside the back door, centered in the yellow stream of sunlight slanting through the opening. His expression was far too innocent, though, and Dean might have laughed (in truth he _had_ to concede the point), except when he opened the refrigerator to grab a bottle of juice, two dozen additional cartons of salt greeted him.

"You're a real comedian. Feelin' your oats this morning I see?"

"You would prefer oats?" Cas had one finger halfway to the ceiling and Dean threw out both hands.

"No!" He rubbed his palm across his mouth to hide a grin, studiously avoiding Cas' hips _entirely._ "And get back in here before you scandalize the damn neighbors with your, your—"

"Your fetish book called it a _pecker_."

"My what!?" Dean squeaked.

"The one with the paper women."

"Will you stop calling them that!?" Dean yanked him away from the door, only to immediately push him through it again. "Out, out out out! Sam's coming!"

Cas stood back porch stoop, frowning at Dean in a way that made Dean swallow convulsively. It wasn't frightening per se, in that _Oh shit, he's going to eat me alive,_ kind of way; it was more of a _oh fuck YES, he's going to eat me alive!_

Dean almost had the door closed, when he spotted Mrs. Murray's bright pink scarf next door as she trotted across her lawn to pull the weeds in her garden. "Fuck, get in, _get in!_"

"I'm out, I'm in, I'm out. Make up your mind," Cas complained haughtily.

Dean refused to look down, but _Jesus Christ,_ what was Cas' dick doing right now? Did it just bounce off his thigh? Was it semi-erect (like Dean's)?

"Dean?" Sam called from the hall. "Pour me some juice!"

Dean frantically unbuttoned his jeans.

"_Now,_ you would like to partake of my talents?" Cas was bemused, watching Dean's pants fall to his ankles.

"Put these on and get on the porch!"

Cas rolled his eyes. "You seem far too concerned with my nudity. Frequent, prolonged exposure is usually just the cure to rid you of an obsession." He stepped back onto the porch.

Mrs. Murray turned; she was parallel now and Dean considered pleading, eyes trailing over Cas' toned shoulders, across the jut of his hip, and finally, _finally_, taking in the thing he didn't (_did too_) want to see.

"_Fuck_," he breathed, heart ticking doubletime. It was pretty. _Dammit to hell and back, of course it was pretty. _He shoved the jeans at Cas. "Please? Just—put the fucking pants on before Mrs. Murray thinks we're fucking!"

"Very well," Cas sighed, bending over far too slowly to step into the pants. Mrs. Murray was at ninety degrees now and turning fast. "Am I to assume it would be distasteful for Mrs. Murray to envision two men fucking."

"Shut up!" Dean whispered, throwing up a hand in a cheery wave, praying violently that Cas' ass was covered in soft, worn denim.

Cas muttered a reply in a tongue Dean couldn't hope to learn in a million years.

"Dean?"

Dean jumped through the door. "Morning!" he winced when his voice echoed off the ceiling.

Sam raised one eyebrow. "Where are your pants?"

…


	6. Chapter 6

"I, uh, need to do some laundry," Dean said cheerfully, nudging the door closed behind him. It resisted and he sighed, closing his eyes. _Goddammit._ He stumbled when he was shoved aside, and then the genie was standing beside him in all his bare-chested, delicious-smelling glory. "And Cas needed pants—" he finished lamely. _Pathetic._

"Fair morning to you, Sam."

"Castiel," Sam nodded, hesitating when neither Dean nor the genie moved. "Are we having… salt for breakfast?"

Dean gritted his teeth. Cas had tucked his hands into his back pockets, dragging the denim indecently low. He had the finest trail of dark, dark hair bisecting his lower stomach, and it disappeared behind—

"Dean?" Sam was full on grinning now and Dean snapped to attention.

"What? No!" _Fuck, he was sweating. Was it hot in here?_ "No," he said more calmly. "Cas just thinks he's fucking hilarious."

"Your brother possesses an irrational fear of iodine deficiency."

"I do not!" Dean protested hotly. He glanced at Sam. "What's that?"

Sam chuckled. "Why are you asking me?" He pointed one of the salt containers in Cas' direction. "Ask your smart genie."

"Smart _ass_," Dean muttered under his breath, stalking to the coffee pot and slamming it under the faucet. He jumped when Cas appeared at his elbow. _Of course._

"Did you or did you not express concern about a goiter, _Dean._"

The inflection on his name, the accent drifting into exotic territory, sent a shiver up his spine. Dean couldn't quite classify it as objectionable, even if a part of him fervently wished he could. "Did not." He shot the genie a warning glare and tugged his t-shirt neckline a little higher.

"I distinctly remember it," Cas insisted, lifting a hand to—

"Don't you dare," Dean whispered between his teeth.

Cas' arm dropped to his side. "I may be under your command in regards to your heart's desire, Dean Winchester, but it would be a grave mistake to believe I am yours to control."

The hair stood up on Dean's forearms and he shivered. _Damn._

"Speaking of!" Sam coughed loudly, the pair at the sink locked in a staring match with no discernible end. "When do we get started on _that?_"

Dean turned reluctantly toward his brother. "The sooner the better," he ground out.

Cas crossed his arms. "Agreed."

Sam bit back a snort at Dean's black look. Neither his brother nor the genie moved to sit down—_why would they_, he thought, _that would entail leaving the other's immediate orbit—_so he shoved all of the salt into a jumble in the center of the table, and reached for his crutches. "You two, go to your respective corner and I'll fry up some ham."

Cas frowned. "I do not hide in corners."

"No, you just sit in the shadows and stare like a creepy stalker," Dean shot back. When the cute little _eleven_ between Cas' brows deepened, he sighed. "He means sit down, doofus." Dean set the carafe on the coffeemaker and punched in the code closest to _extra fucking strong, _before falling into a kitchen chair, already inexplicably exhausted. "And eggs, Sammy."

Sam peeked around the refrigerator door. "Yeah?"

Dean avoided his eyes. "Cas likes eggs in the morning."

Sam schooled his expression. "Eggs it is."

…

Cas stared at the shop through the Impala's windshield. "I do not wish to spend the entirety of my day in this cinderblock box."

Dean shut off the engine and spun the keys around his index finger. "Yeah, well some of us gotta make a livin', so we put up with a few inconveniences." He climbed from the car, blood thrumming in anticipation. He had missed this. He ducked down and peered into the opening. "And we're already late, due to that unplanned side trip to Goodwill," he added pointedly before slamming the door. Sam had been an asshole and refused to help deliver all one hundred and fifty containers of salt to the donation center; apparently there was a caveat to the genie's power: that which he wrought, he was powerless to undo. _Which would bear remembering,_ Dean thought. He glanced back at the still immobile genie. "Cas. Get a move on!"

By the time he unlocked the door, the genie was already inside, circling a 1968 Dodge Charger in gleaming red-orange. "I am partial to this specimen."

Dean grinned at his rapt expression. "I gotta warn you, she's American." Cas' face blanked, and he grimaced. "Nevermind. Just… don't touch anything." In his office, Dean booted up his computer and scanned the new work orders. He smiled; looked like his mom and Jo had done a fine job keeping everything running smoothly in his absence.

As if on cue, the bell jangled over the back door. _Mom. _

_Shit._

Dean scrambled for the door, but he was too late, Mary already smiling and reaching for the stranger in the middle of her son's shop.

"Well, hello, can I help you?"

"Mom!"

Mary startled but then quickly recovered, joy transforming her pretty face. "Dean!" She wrapped him up in a big hug, her musical laugh ringing through the interior. When she stepped back, her eyes were shining and she gripped his shoulders tight. "I'm very upset with you for not calling me and letting me know you were home safe," she said sternly.

Dean grinned sheepishly. "Sorry, ma."

"Hmmm," Mary hummed, glancing back at the stranger. "Oh my, you'll have to forgive my rudeness," she laughed. "Dean's been away on an adventure."

"Ma—" Dean flushed.

"You are forgiven." Cas' deep voice was melodic, and Dean frowned at the too smooth tone. "If—" Cas added, eyes twinkling. "You tell me what that magnificent scent is." He gestured toward the counter, where a wax paper-wrapped pie plate waited.

"Oh no," Dean began but Mary interrupted, her smile wide.

"Oh! Would you like a slice? I always bring Dean a pie on Monday's." She winked and to Dean's mortification, patted the tiny bulge above the waistband of his jeans. "He has a problem with sweets," she whispered.

"I do not!" His face was on fire and he sucked in his gut when Cas' eyes followed Mary's hand.

"I would love a slice, you are very kind to offer," Cas replied cordially, giving Mary a little bow.

"You just ate," Dean protested, causing Mary to pause with her hand over the plate.

"Are you with Dean, then?"

The casual acceptance of the words hit Dean square in the chest and he was immediately swamped with a wash of emotion: longing, denial, lust, and confusion, all wrapped up in a fierce, abiding love for the woman carefully cutting Dean's own too wide slice of pie.

"Yes," Cas said simply, at the same moment Dean squeaked out a "No!"

The slight beat between the cuts of her knife was the only indication Mary heard him, and Dean shot Cas a pleading look.

"Dean has graciously allowed me to apprentice him for the next several days," Cas offered, accepting the plate. He smiled at the sweet and spicy mix of apple and cinnamon now wafting through the garage. "This looks heavenly."

Mary grinned, handing Dean a plate. "Apple is Dean's favorite, too."

Dean sighed and rummaged under the counter for the package of plastic forks he kept there for just this purpose.

Mary clucked her tongue. "You know I hate plastic utensils."

Dean bumped her with his hip and shrugged. "And I hate church, yet there I am, every Sunday at ten-thirty sharp, beside you in that damn pew."

"Dean!"

Dean chuckled and dodged her swipe, eyes nearly rolling back in his head at the first bite of tart, spicy goodness. "Mmm. A-plus, Mama Winchester." He leaned over to smack a kiss to her cheek.

Mary dismissed him with an airy wave. "You are wasting your time, sir. I am immune to your charms."

"Liar," Dean grinned, shoveling in another bite of pie.

Cas took in the exchange in silence, and Dean flushed when he caught his eye. He cleared his throat, realizing he hadn't introduced him yet. "Ma, this is Castiel—" he paused; _for fuck's sake,_ he hadn't considered the genie would need a last name. He scanned the garage frantically for inspiration. "Hancock!" he finished, looking quickly away from the tire display.

Mary wiped her hands on a paper napkin and lifted one over the counter. "Mary Winchester. It's so nice to meet you, Castiel."

"Cas, please," Cas murmured, squeezing her palm before lifting her knuckles to his lips.

Mary's mouth made a pretty little _Oh_, and her cheeks pinked.

As Cas released her hand, his gaze locked on Dean.

Dean's pulse fluttered erratically.

"Oh, good, there's Jo!" Mary exclaimed, breaking the spell. She rushed toward the back door, where Jo could be seen struggling with a large, cardboard box. "And don't think I've forgotten your blasphemy, Dean Winchester," she threw over her shoulder. "You missed two Sunday's now with your little vacation!"

Dean grunted, taking another bite. "Some vacation," he muttered, scraping the last bit of gooey crust from his plate. When he glanced up, Cas was staring at him. "What?" he asked, self-consciously wiping his mouth.

"You regret my intrusion in your life," Cas said simply, carefully placing his plate on the counter.

"I—" Dean stuttered to a stop. _Well yeah. _

_Didn't he?_

"I assure you, it is temporary, and I share your disillusionment with our predicament." Cas' face was stiff and he turned to survey the cars lined up in the bays.

"Cas—"

"I give you my word, Dean Winchester," Cas murmured so low that Dean had to strain to hear him over the cheerful jabbering of Jo and his mother. "The instant your wishes are fulfilled, I will cease to exist in your world and you will never see me again."

Dean watched him walk away. "Good," he nodded faintly. "That's good."

He ignored the odd little pinch around his heart.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean sent up a quick prayer for his balls when Jo launched herself at him, wrapping her legs around his waist. "So uh, didja miss me?" When her arms tightened around his neck, he gasped. "Jo. Can't breathe."

"Sorry," she laughed, leaning back, and he staggered, trying not to drop her.

"Damn, you're heavier than you look." He winced when she smacked him above the ear. "Ow."

She slid to the ground with a grin. "I'll forgive you for being an asshole because holy Jesus I'm glad you're back. Who's that."

Dean followed her finger. "Uh, that's Cas. Cas, Jo." When Castiel remained stone faced and unmoving, Dean fumbled for something to fill the void. "He's my new apprentice?"

Jo rolled her eyes. "_You_ have an apprentice. Don't you have to, I don't know, let an apprentice actually _touch_ the cars? And look what I brought you."

She bounced back to the counter in typical Jo fashion, while Dean tried—and failed—to decipher the look on Cas' face. "Ok I'll bite. What'd you bring me?" He peered over her shoulder as she ripped the packing tape off the big cardboard box.

"New tees!" She crowed, unfurling one with a flourish.

"Aw, man," Dean murmured approvingly. The shop graphic looked awesome, and the grey cotton was soft between his fingers. "Nice, Jo."

"Then put it on, boss man. We got merchandise to sell and you're still my hottest advertisement." She tossed one to Cas who caught it in one hand. When she turned to hand one to Mary, she mumbled out of the corner of her mouth, "What's his problem?"

"I don't know," Dean admitted with a frown. When he glanced back, Cas had set the rolled t-shirt on top of the nearest car and walked away. "Grab the till and unlock the front, Jo. I'll be right back."

"It's my day off!"

Dean ignored her. She was here because she couldn't stay away, the cars as much in her blood as his and Sam's. They had spent more afternoons than any of them could count when they were kids, pushing Hotwheels through old patches of oil and sneaking popsicles out of Bobby's freezer. Dean's place may be newer and shinier, but it still smelled like home.

When he passed the car, he grabbed the black tee. Tapping Cas on the shoulder with it, he grinned cautiously. "Earth to Castiel," he intoned.

Cas glanced at his hand. "I am already sufficiently dressed per your repeated and tiresome stipulations."

Dean felt oddly guilty, like he should apologize for making the guy wear clothes in public. "Cas—I don't have any stipulations." The genie continued to stare and he bit his lip. "I mean, you can't stroll through my place of business buck naked, but, you know," he fidgeted. "What you do when we're at home is your prerogative." He was blushing now to beat the band, his brain tripping over _home_, and _naked,_ and—he waved the tee, desperately going for broke with his most charming grin. "Hey, lookie here! New shirt!"

Cas sighed and accepted the tee. "And what am I to do with this?"

"You wear it." Dean hesitated and thought, _what the hell,_ grabbing the hem of his shirt and raking it slowly over his head. He tossed it aside and snapped the new one in the air a couple of times to release any wrinkles. Cas' eyes lingered on his stomach, and for one heart-stopping second, Dean thought he was going to touch him.

He sucked in a quick breath when he realized he didn't care.

He had showered alone this morning. He had stood there, slowly shampooing his hair, until the water ran cold.

Cas looked away and he could breathe again.

He tugged the new tee into place, nerves jumping, and held out his arms, afraid the genie was going to walk away. "See? Fresh and new." He wondered if Cas could hear the erratic _bump bump_ of his heart. He cleared his throat and nodded at the roll of cotton still held loosely in Cas' fist. "Now it's your turn."

Cas turned toward the office. "I will execute the replacement in private."

Dean stared after him dumbfounded. "I've seen you naked like eight times already." He bit his lip, glancing at his mom and Jo, but they were chatting at the register, oblivious.

Cas disappeared behind the office door.

The tips of Dean's ears burned and he could taste the unfamiliar sting of rejection. "I don't think so," he muttered, stalking across the garage. That damn genie had kept him on pins and needles for more than forty-eight hours now, virtually _eating him_ _alive_ every time they were alone, popping up in his _shower,_ by his _bed…_so just _no._ Dean was taking none of the blame for his sudden spate of awkwardness.

Castiel was obviously pissed about something, and he was going to get to the bottom of it.

He still had three wishes.

When he stepped into his office, he was met with Cas' naked back, and he quickly closed the door behind him.

Cas tensed, the dips and valleys of his shoulders in sharp relief against blue-white fluorescent glow.

_He needs a haircut_, Dean thought absently, the dark curls brushing the backs of his ears. He jumped when Cas spoke.

"Do I need to school you on the nature of privacy, Dean Winchester?"

"Since when are you private?" Dean shot back. He blanched when the genie rounded on him, eyes furiously blue and angry and, _fuck,_ inexcusably hot_._

Dean's brand new t-shirt was ripped from his body in a flash of blue and he was pinned, held against the door by an invisible force. A faint glow filled the tiny office and he gasped a warning. "Cas, my mom—"

"Where is your respect for privacy, _now,_ human? It is a two-way street, is it not?" Cas advanced slowly until he was a hairsbreadth away. "You are so transparent. You ache to see _my_ body, call to me in your dreams, yet you repeatedly deny me the same?"

Dean was having trouble breathing, and it had nothing to do with being supernaturally indisposed. "Didn't deny, exactly," he managed, shaking his head.

Cas' eyes fell down the length of him and he smiled, one hand lightly brushing Dean's collarbone. "You taunt me in front of your mother, safe from reciprocation." His hand fell to his side and his expression hardened. "You fear your own desire."

"I don't have—" Dean broke off on a groan when his zipper was lowered, and Cas dipped his head, bringing their mouths so close they were nearly touching, breaths mingling, hot and sweet. "_Please, _Cas_,_" he panted, every pore stretched taut with want.

"You desire many things, Dean," Cas said quietly. "But I am no man's plaything. Not unless they wish it."

The genie vanished and Dean was left trembling. And cold. He thumped his head on the door three times, hoping to knock some sense into himself.

A sharp rap on the door startled him. "Come on Winchester, get a move on."

"Coming," he barked, rubbing his crotch because he was pathetically close to making that double entendre truth.

The destroyed shirt was shoved in the bottom of the wastebasket, and the shirt he had given Cas, yanked over his head.

"I gave you the grey," Jo said when he came out of the office.

He shrugged, hoping his cheeks weren't as red as they felt. "I like the black."

"You hate the black. You always say it's too itchy." Jo's chin had that stubborn clench that meant she was suspicious, and Dean was swamped with a perverse desire to tell her the truth. _Oh well, Cas ripped it off me in a snit because I haven't let him fuck me._

"It brings out my eyes," he offered instead with a wink, and it was the right thing, a flippant and meaningless flirtation, because Jo rolled her eyes and told him she was going shopping.

He might have closed the shop for the rest of the day after that, lain on top of his favorite car and yanked his dick into oblivion, chasing relief from the hunger that crawled through his veins—but his mom refused to leave.

So it consumed him, slowly, shadowing him through the morning as he worked on the cars, visited with customers, kidded around with his mom over lunch.

It made his stomach jumpy, stretched his nerves thin, until finally, he drove the Impala out to city lake at mid-afternoon and rubbed one out in private, desperate for release.

It didn't help.

He cleaned up with some napkins from the glove box, miserable and limp when he tucked himself into his damp underwear. He sat there, fly splayed open, watching the waterbirds skim over the lake, and wondered what the fuck had happened to his life.

_And where the hell was Cas?_


	8. Chapter 8

Dean was behind three cars in the drive thru at McDonald's, stomach rumbling, unable to face the thought of actual cooking.

He ignored the empty passenger seat.

What if the house was empty too?

He rolled down the window.

_Welcome to McDonald's, I'll take your order when you're ready._

Strumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he wondered if Cas liked onions on his burger.

_Can I help you?_

He cursed under his breath and pulled away. Burgers weren't good enough (and fuck the blush climbing his neck at _that_).

He sat in the parking lot of the local pasta place, frozen in indecision over red sauce or white.

He tried Thai, but none of the dishes offered a description to go with the names (and he was too embarrassed to ask the girl at the register to explain them).

There was an Indian restaurant over by the outlet mall, probably the closest thing to Zanzibari food as it was going to get in Lawrence, Kansas, but he was hungry, _dammit,_ and he hadn't liked the food when he was in Africa in the first place.

He drove to Benny's as a last resort and ordered two steaks, medium rare, with two loaded baked potatoes. At least if his attempt at a truce went up in blue smoke, he would go down with a full stomach.

And just _fuck_ his hot neck, fuck it right to hell and back.

The house was quiet when he finally unlocked the door, his mom's pie in one hand, the sack of food knocking against his thigh.

He left the bags in the kitchen and slowly approached his bedroom, grimacing because he needed a pep talk to open _his own goddamn door._

He knocked. "Cas?" When there was no answer, he cautiously turned the knob and peeked in.

His mouth went bone dry.

Cas was sprawled across the bed, reminiscent of their first morning in the hotel, perfectly (_beautifully_, if Dean was being honest, and he was close to being ready, really he was), nude, one knee cocked out at an angle, an arm thrown over his head. His skin _glowed_ in the sunset pouring through the window, a dance of rich pinks and gold.

Dean didn't know whether to suck it all in as fast as he could or look away. _Look away, look away!_

His eyes ignored his brain and traveled down to well-formed feet, and up to pretty cheekbones, and repeating again and again.

That hunger that had been chasing him all day came back with brutal force, and he was desperately hard.

The genie blinked slowly, grunting when he spotted Dean, not bothering to cover himself (_of course)_ as he stretched into wakefulness. "Had enough?"

"Shut up," Dean muttered, flushing hot and cold and swallowing convulsively. He didn't want steak for dinner.

He wanted _this._

Cas patted the tiny patch of bed he wasn't already monopolizing. "Take off your clothes."

Dean wasn't ready. His mouth worked open and closed and he _knew_ his face was beet red, he could feel it, and his pants were so tight he feared for his dick's circulation, he really did, but _no. Not ready_.

And he kind of hated himself for it.

Cas chuckled and the deep, dark sound pulsed right through Dean's groin.

"You are so transparent, my friend."

Dean was finally able to glance away, senses flooded with a hot wash of embarrassment, the thrill of the murmured endearment sparking over his nerve endings in pleasant bursts of electricity. "So you keep telling me," he said to the floor.

Cas sat up and cocked his head. "Did you bring me food, Dean Winchester?"

Dean absolutely didn't watch that pretty chest expand and release with a deep inhalation. "I—"

_Yes, yes I did. Would you like to have dinner with me? I hope you like steak. How do you feel about bacon and sour cream? Don't bother getting dressed. You're home. We're—_

A million conversation starters bumped along the talking center of his brain, but they never connected with his mouth and he had to swallow again.

"Steak," he finally managed to murmur.

Cas stretched again and climbed from the bed, crossing the small bedroom in three gliding, sexy steps, pausing in front of Dean and stopping his heart when he reached up to cup his jaw. "You really are an enigma."

And then he was squeezing through the doorway, all of that gorgeous, bronzed skin touching Dean in places he had imagined just a few short hours ago while fucking into his own hand and watching the sun glance off of city lake.

He knew he should tell Cas to put on some pants, _God,_ they couldn't sit in the kitchen and calmly eat dinner _naked_.

Well, one of them. Not both of them.

_Not both of them._

And then he was consumed by the wayward, accidental thought, nearly orgasming on the spot imagining the thick, juicy steak, slow bites and long pulls of cold beer, his skin bare, his body free from confines.

He was prickly, hot. Tight. The neckline of the new tee was itchy and he tugged it away from his Adam's apple.

The rustle of a plastic bag and squeaking of the utensil drawer let him know Cas was setting the table, waiting for Dean to join him, his stupid old world manners probably eclipsing his snark for once.

Dean unbuttoned his jeans.

When he was bare, knees quaking, he tried to convince himself to walk into the kitchen. He was too damn flustered to be aroused (_thank God)_ but not enough to keep a body-length blush at bay, telling himself to be cool, to just walk in like he owned the place (which, _he did_), to be nonchalant, this was _his damn house and he could eat supper naked if he wanted to._

The hallway was cold and his nipples hardened. Or maybe that was the anticipation. _Or maybe that was the fucking hot genie sitting in his kitchen_.

Fuck it. He was going to eat that steak naked. (And probably puke it right back up, if his stomach didn't settle down.)

He refused to look at Cas when he walked into the kitchen, beelining for his usual chair, hoping his ass didn't sizzle when it hit the cold wood.

Cas froze.

Dean knew he was staring, because he could _feel_ it. He concentrated _really hard_ on the checked pattern of the tablecloth Cas must have dug out of the linen drawer. He picked at a loose thread. He had forgotten he even had this.

He jumped when Cas placed a hand on the back of his chair, leaning across him to blow softly over the lopsided candle in the center of the table. A long trail of smoke lifted toward the ceiling before the flame flickered to life. Dean grinned. _Show off._

The fingers brushing his shoulder calmed his nerves, and he took a deep breath and lifted his fork.

Then squeaked—a humiliatingly uncool squeak—when his chair was manhandled across the floor, until it was obscenely close to Cas', until he was practically in his lap. _Don't think it, don't think it, don't—._

He glared at the genie and was rewarded with a sly pat on the accessible portion of his left cheek, where it peeked through the back of his chair.

"Stop tempting me and eat," Cas said dryly, smiling in satisfaction when Dean took his first shaky bite.

It was weird.

Almost unbearably hot, but weird.

Dean ate everything, and he couldn't have told you what it tasted like to save his life.

Once, a stray drop of butter fell from a mouthful of potato as he bit into it, and the fucking genie casually leaned over and _sucked it off his lower lip._

Dean almost came in his lap.

Cas had laughed softly and taken pity on him, ceasing the small touches on Dean's wrist, his knee, the small of his back, his _ass_. It was fucking unrelenting and Dean was going to have an aneurysm before he ever hit plate.

When he heard Sammy's key in the lock, he froze in mortification and would have sprinted for the bedroom save for the iron grip of a hand on his thigh.

Sam paused in the doorway, taking in the scene in the kitchen with one raised brow. "I'm not even going to ask," he muttered, before moving to the fridge to grab a beer and then disappearing down the hall to his bedroom.

The blare of some godawful pop station echoed from behind his closed door.

Cas contemplated the music with a shake of his head. "Unconventional choice to cover the sound of your orgasms," he said.

Dean choked on the last bite of potato and was rewarded with a smack on the back. "What orgasm," he gasped, eyes watering. _Orgasms. Smssss._

Cas smiled serenely. "The ones Sam assumes you'll be having after dinner." He nudged Dean's mouth closed with a finger on his chin. "Finish your potato."

Dean lifted the trembling fork to his mouth. He could finish the potato, but could he finish what he had inadvertently started?


	9. Chapter 9

There were no orgasms.

Cas tidied the kitchen while Dean tried not to stare at his ass, averting his eyes from full frontal assaults, at least when Cas was paying attention. Which was always. _Dammit._ The genie was mouthwateringly well-endowed, and Dean really fucking enjoyed the way the darkness between his legs—

"We will shower before sleep."

"Huh." Dean blinked rapidly, but Cas was pulling him from the chair by his elbows and suddenly there was too much freedom, too many places to see and be seen, wayward body parts to rub on, _the fucking lights were on_, he couldn't just waltz through his house with his dick bouncing off a naked man's stomach, it—

Cas smoothed Dean's frown with a soft push of his thumb between his brows. "Exit the room ahead me," the genie murmured. "I want to see the way your body moves, unencumbered by cloth."

"Fuck," Dean exhaled, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Later."

Dean could _hear_ the genie's smug smile.

His knees were knocking, but he did it. Almost made it to the safety of his tiny bedroom too, before he was caught by the wrist and pulled into the bathroom, thrust under a hot shower without protest—he was so far beyond protesting at this point it was laughable—the bathtub nearly too small for two fully grown men, the steam enveloping them and providing Dean enough hazy coverage that he could—_finally—_catch his breath.

Until Cas touched him.

He soaped Dean's hair. _Twice_. Murmuring approval and clucking his tongue, wearing an altogether too human smirk when he gave him a faux-hawk.

Dean's hands were shaking too hard to reciprocate, so he stood there, watching Cas soap himself, eyes following those pretty fingertips as they circled the genie's nipples, scrubbed under his arms, smoothed down a hard, flat stomach, massaged the sharp divots of a pair of really beautiful hips.

Dean waited under the pounding spray, a statue, woefully unsure how to participate, all the pep talks in the world ill equipped to prepare him for _this_. So he stood, a puppet on Cas' stage, needing direction, someone to pull his strings.

Cas watched him too, as he used the bar soap to lather his hands before dipping them both between his legs, gaze locked on Dean's as he touched himself, sighing deeply, heavy lidded, biting into his lower lip when it was good, smiling when Dean's own breathing became labored. He backed Dean into the tile, covering his body with his own, breathing in his ear, harsh gasps and breathless moans as he transferred the excess lather on his skin, until Dean was covered with it.

It was hot as _fuck,_ so hot Dean was still paralyzed with indecision; was he supposed to perform his own bathtime show? Soap his dick and –a bad idea all round because if he touched his dick he was going to erupt in 0.2 seconds—moan like a porn star and make Sammy infinitely grateful he'd turned up the music?

Cas shifted under the spray, lifting his face and turning slowly in a circle, affording Dean a gorgeous front row seat as he rinsed the suds from his body.

Dean decided he was clean enough, his entire body thrumming with a thing too powerful to dwell on for long, needing distance or sleep, something to avoid processing whatever _this_ was. He moved to exit the shower, but was shoved under the spray and against the wall, a dark chuckle and a murmured _not so fast, Dean,_ his bastard dick jumping in hearty approval.

Cas soaped him next, taking entirely too long on his neck, his collarbone, his shoulders, Dean's lower body screaming for attention, remembering the pretty, long pulls and strokes Cas had given himself, _needing_ those hands on his body, but no, Cas avoided the exact damn thing, place, Dean craved most. Even his fucking _fingers_ were getting more action than his dick in this torture chamber, and it shouldn't be so goddamn hot to watch your fingertips disappear into another person's mouth.

Cas turned him away, gently pushing him into the tile wall, relieving Dean at last from the scorching torture of meeting his eyes. He washed his back—gentle and maybe Dean's favorite part, aside from his near brutal anticipatory erection—soft hands and tender manipulations of his muscles, pushing along the nubs of his spine, working all his many knots free.

Dean sighed and dropped his forehead to the tile.

He was tensing not two minutes later when those fingers drifted too close to the cleft of his ass, but then they skirted away, soaping the rounded globes of his cheeks, making him blush _again_ when those hands urged his thighs to part, his feet shuffling to comply. _Fuckfuckfuck_.

Cas squirted a healthy dose of shampoo into the thatch of dark hair at his groin, and Dean had to squeeze his eyes closed, face flaming, as Cas cleaned the most intimate parts of his body, not lingering anywhere for long, succinct. This was a _bath,_ nothing more, although _fucking Christ_ it was going to kill him.

When he circled back to his ass, Dean forced himself to unclench, and was rewarded with a grunt of approval at his ear, a light nip from hot teeth, and a steady, rhythmic massage in a place he shouldn't be so worked up about. He didn't _do that_, he had never _done that, _and he didn't want to start. He didn't. It wasn't something he was curious about or felt like it was an experience he was lacking. He wasn't interested and he meant to say so. The words were there—where were they—oh right, they were tangled up behind the gurgling moans he was stifling with a fist at his mouth, teeth nearly cutting his skin.

He exploded all over his nice tile wall.

Sammy had picked out this tile, the pale translucent blue now a splotchy mess, and he breathed through his nose, boneless, as the showerhead was detached and used to clean him (and the tile) of all the evidence.

He was wrapped in a towel, buffed dry, and handed a toothbrush, this wordless, soundless, blistering hot bath complete, the genie kissing his cheek and leaving him alone in the room.

So, okay, there was _one_ orgasm. An embarrassingly one-sided, dick untouched—fucking _life-affirming_—orgasm of such magnitude it took Dean's brain five full minutes to come back online.

He stared at his reflection in the mirror, glassy-eyed and red-lipped, and thought maybe it would be okay to try the butt stuff. Sometime.

When he got to his bedroom, there were strong hands waiting, pulling the towel from his hips before he was tucked under a clean sheet.

"We will work on your stamina." Cas lay down beside him, rolling easily into his back.

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to find the strength to turn over, face this smug bastard one on one and tell him he had stamina, he fucking had stamina to spare_. You want to go?_

A hand snaked over the sheet and gently squeezed his waist. "Not yet."

The whispered words ruffled the hair at his temple, and Dean swallowed, wondering if he cared that either he really was woefully transparent, or–a truly terrifying thought—the genie could read his mind. "Okay," he said instead, thinking he'd never fall asleep with another man basically spooning him, but he did, and if he awoke in the night at all, he didn't remember.

…

When he did wake, he was cold, flat on his back and shivering, blinking blearily at the figure propped up at the end of his bed, sunlight streaming bright and cheery through the filmy curtains.

The damn genie had pulled the sheet all the way to his ankles and was unabashedly watching Dean sleep. _Naked._

Dean moved to cover himself but the genie's scowl and the firmly negative shake of his head made him laugh and cover his eyes instead. "Pervert." His voice was raspy.

He gasped when the genie loomed over him and dropped a cool, wet kiss to his upper thigh.

Ok now he was hard. _Fucking fuck._

Cas sat back, apparently content to watch Dean's dick curve upward with each pulsing rush of blood to the tip. He frowned when Dean remained motionless. "Why do you continue to deny yourself?"

"What!?" Dean squeaked, peering out from behind his hand. "I'm not!"

"Do you not normally bring yourself to emissions on waking?"

"No!" Dean blushed furiously red. "And that's one of those private things."

"I cleaned your _private things_ with my bare hands less than eight hours ago."

"Shut up!" Dean hissed.

"Your brother sleeps. Take your erection in your hand."

"No! Cas—"

"Either you do or I will pop you into the backyard and show your friendly neighbor just how much you enjoy earthly pleasures."

"Stop," Dean moaned, but his hand had already traveled downward, intending to find the sheet, but instead pinching his dick at its base. He stroked it once, tentatively, blushing again when Cas sat back and grunted in approval.

"Slowly, if you please. I would like to have this memory to enjoy for the remainder of my day. Your place of business offers little in the way of entertainment."

Dean groaned, stroking again and burying his face in the crook of his arm when he felt his legs pulled wide, the bed shifting until there were knees nudging his ass, a pair of too warm hands cradling his hips. Another wet kiss fell on his stomach. Cas' goddamn face must be all but inches from his dick and he wondered what the genie would do if he angled his dick up just so—

"I will have eggs to break my fast, Dean Winchester. Perhaps another day."

"Fuck you," Dean sighed irritably, laying into his dick with abandon now, despite Cas' stern' admonishments to _slow_, blocking the bastard out, blocking this entire fucking _experience_ out, unable to stop touching himself because Cas was watching and that in itself was so hot he was going to burst into flames.

The orgasm started in his belly, curling down between his legs until it hit his balls, and they tightened for a heady beat of anticipation, and then he was coming, all over his stomach, the sheets, his hands filthy and wet, sloppy with it, barely noticing Cas had moved to lay beside him until he was whispering dirty murmurs of approval in Dean's ear.

He lay panting, his lungs' struggle to find enough air the only sound for several quiet moments.

Cas rolled over to retrieve the discarded towel from the floor, and Dean was surprised he had any blood left, but there it was, rushing to color his cheeks when the genie lifted his spent dick from his thigh and perfunctorily wiped it clean.

"You may be the most beautiful creature in existence," Cas murmured, turning Dean's dick to and fro as he studied it, which sucked the air right the fuck back out of his lungs in a _whoosh_, both the words and the tender way Cas was taking care of him. As though Dean really was precious. _Beautiful._

"_Must_ you wear clothes to work?"

Dean snorted, laughter bubbling up, effervescent and light in his chest. "Yeah, Cas."

"Pity," the genie muttered, and climbed from the bed.


	10. Chapter 10

The slow _thud thud_ of a pair of crutches echoed down the hall, until Sam peeked around the kitchen door.

Dean and Cas looked up expectantly from their seats at the table.

Sam cleared his throat and swung into the kitchen. "Just checking," he mumbled, heading straight for the coffee pot.

Dean bit into a strip of crunchy bacon to hide his grin. "Sleep okay? When do you lose the walking sticks?"

"Today, hopefully," Sam said, setting them aside to pour coffee in a tall, aluminum thermos. He leaned a hip on the counter, zeroing in on Dean's suspiciously bland expression. "How did _you_ sleep?"

"So-so," Dean shrugged, absolutely _not_ jumping when the hand on his butt grabbed a healthy chunk of flesh.

"_Christ_," Sam muttered, screwing the cap on his thermos and shaking his head. He rounded on the pair at the table a second later. "You can't possibly convince me you think this is a good idea. Fuck's sake, Dean."

"What?" Dean flushed, squirming. "Nothing's going on."

Sam's lips thinned. "No? Exactly what was it you wished for Dean?"

"Nothing!" Dean knew his face was red, but he forced himself to look his brother square in the eye. "I haven't wished anything. Cas, tell him."

"Your brother speaks the truth," Cas nodded. "For a change."

"Gee, thanks," Dean snapped.

"So this is," Sam waved a hand toward the table. "What, exactly?"

"None of your business." Dean had had just about enough of his nosy little brother's—

"C'mon, Dean," Sam interrupted, exasperated. "You can't fuck around with a several _hundred_ year old being from an alternate world and not expect me to be worried!"

"We're not fucking!" Dean shouted in frustration, to which Cas' eyes rolled so hard Dean thought they were going to fall out of his head. "Exactly," he trailed off.

Sam hopped toward the table. "I think you should make your wishes, Dean." He ignored the sharp look the genie threw in his direction.

"Why?"

"Yes, Samuel Winchester, I too am most interested in your logic." There was an eerie calm to Cas' voice.

Sam turned away for a beat, before squaring his shoulders and facing the pair. He met Cas' gaze first. "I think you've bewitched my brother, because the longer it takes him to complete his wishes, the freer you are, out here," he waved a crutch around the room. "With all of us. And you," he turned on Dean. "You've been hiding behind what you _think_ everyone expects you to be instead of actually _being_ for so long_,_ I don't think you know what the fuck you want anymore."

Dean looked at Cas. "Is that true?"

"That you are incapable of recognizing your inner longings? Yes."

"That's not what I meant," Dean ground out, ears burning. "About you. Freedom." _Using me. _He didn't know if he even cared about the answer at this point; the thought of Cas disappearing—_I will cease to exist in your world—_left a hollow spot in his chest. It tasted a little like panic.

Cas' eyes never left his. If he was a liar, he was a damn good one, because that was a hell of a punch of emotion buried in the fathomless blue. "I would not be opposed to continuing as we are."

Dean tried not to outwardly react, but he knew the uptick of his pulse was audible to the supernatural being in the room. His eyes fell to his lap, unable to absorb the answering spark of heat staring back at him, picking at a popped stitch on the inseam of his jeans. "Me too," he said quietly.

He knew Cas was smiling, could feel it tickling his lips, his cheeks, his scalp.

"Jesus," Sam muttered, raking hands through his hair. "You're both hopeless."

Dean exhaled a shaky sigh of relief, the tension in the room shifting into something he knew he wasn't ready to look at too hard. So he ignored it. "Sit down and have some eggs, Sammy."

…

It was fucking distracting, trying to dress with a genie breathing down your neck. Cas yanked three –apparently offensively colored—t-shirts out of Dean's hands before giving a curt nod of approval to a dusky green one, standing too close when Dean tugged it over his head, making it impossible to breathe without bumping into a wayward genie body part.

Which was probably the point.

The shirt was too small, molding to his back and squeezing his biceps and Dean fisted his hands on his hips in exasperation. "I can't wear this. I look ridiculous."

"You can and you will," Cas returned coolly, turning Dean and holding him still, probably staring at his butt because when he whipped him back around he said, "Change into the dark ones."

"Cas—"

And there went his oldest and most comfortable pair of jeans. Frayed ribbons of denim in a pile around his ankles.

"For fuck's sake," Dean sighed, stomping to his closet—in blue boxer briefs and a shirt two sizes too small—to grab his best jeans, jeans he reserved for special occasions. Jeans that fit his ass and thighs like a glove, the ones he wore when he wanted to get lucky. "Already been lucky once today," he muttered. "Can't say as I need a repeat, especially not in the goddman middle of the work day."

His hands were shoved aside before he could tuck all his bits in place—damn jeans were snug, okay?—and two very efficient—too efficient, _fuck—_hands manhandled his dick and balls and then he was panting_,_ and yeah, maybe he could get lucky again.

His zipper was lifted with a sharp, quick _rasp._

_Or maybe not._

Cas lifted a brow when Dean just stood there, breathing labored.

"I'm going, I'm going," he wheezed, waltzing out of the room first, so Cas could watch his ass.

_Pervert._

The genie apparently had balls of steel, because he had yet to do more than watch Dean get off—a few times now—making Dean more and more curious about just what it would take to knock _Cas_ into a moaning, breathless, writhing mess in the sheets, the way Dean had been just an hour ago, a head between his legs, those pretty fingers—

"You will ruin this denim too if you do not cease your train of thought immediately." Cas cupped both ass cheeks and squeezed.

Dean closed his eyes and started counting to nine billion. "Stop reading my mind."

"Stop being obvious."

Dean leaned back, tilting his head. "When do you—" He was cut off when the genie placed a hand across his mouth.

"I do not wish to gag you, Dean Winchester, but you test my patience."

Dean didn't know what possessed him, but he kissed the palm covering his lips and was rewarded with a wry smile.

"Your impudence is still infuriating."

Dean grinned and pulled the hand from his mouth. "Something tells me it's growin' on you." He pursed his lips, and on queue, the genie's eyes fell to his mouth. _Gotcha. _"So can I wear a shirt that isn't going to embarrass me in front of my customers?"

Cas blinked. "No," he snapped, pointing toward the door.

Dean hid his smile, buoyed by Cas' bossy frustration and kind of endearing infatuation with Dean's body.

He could maybe get used to being objectified.

(Although he still wanted to see the genie come undone, just once.)

…

The green shirt rode up every time he bent over the hood of a car.

Which was apparently a giant turn on.

At 9:22, he was shoved behind the tire display, forced to stifle a filthy moan while a pair of really beautiful lips bit and sucked at his navel for a solid twelve minutes.

Dean was super glad his mom and Jo weren't coming in today.

…

He had to hitch one knee out awkwardly so as not to permanently damage his dick in the too-tight pants, rolling under the front end of the Charger and cursing his horny _apprentice_'s inability to keep his hands to himself.

The scruff burn on his belly was damn distracting.

…

10:36.

Time for a coffee break.

Dean didn't get any coffee, but he did get stripped naked and shoved on his back on top of his appointment calendar, the genie pulling Dean's desk chair right up between his legs while Dean gave himself a fast and dirty handjob, the likes of which his dick hadn't seen since he was fourteen and hiding behind Bobby's garage with a shoplifted Playgirl.

Cas threatened to hose him off with the power washer if he didn't put the jeans back on, so Dean did.

(He maybe didn't mind.)

…

They ate chicken salad from the deli across the road for lunch.

Dean had no fucking idea how he didn't pop the zipper on his jeans, so distractingly hard with anticipation he ate two pickles.

He hated pickles.

…

One o'clock, one finger on _that place_ on his ass.

Dean had to powerwash the Charger.

(Cas watched).

…

Dean closed an hour early, at four, exhausted but satisfied, yawning, as they climbed into the Impala, "I could use a nap."

…

He woke naked and tangled in strong brown arms, just in time for dinner, Kentucky Fried Chicken and mashed potatoes, courtesy of a crutchless and celebratory Sam.

Who held the food hostage unless they promised to eat it fully clothed.

_Blue-balled bastard_.

(Oh wait, maybe that was Dean).

Not that Sam let the chance to mock Dean's too-small tee slide.

After, Dean was soaked and soaped and left pouting in a tub full of suds—not so much as a washcloth to his aching dick—until Cas got fed up and stormed back in, calling him something exotic and pretty (but which Dean suspected meant _spoiled brat) _before turning the showerhead on him and getting him off too fast for Dean to really enjoy it. Then he was carted off to bed like a toddler, where he slept like the dead tucked under a 600 year old genie.

All in all it was a very strange day.


	11. Chapter 11

Dean watched Cas sleep, wondering just how in the hell he had acclimated so quickly to another body in his bed.

He never stayed over. He never had anybody _stay_ over. He smiled, imagining the fireworks if he tried to tell Cas he had to find somewhere else to sleep. He inched closer, until the genie's breath tickled his cheek.

_Why did he sleep? _Dean wondered. Did he get tired? Hungry? Need food and water and rest like humans? _Sex?_ His gaze fell to the smooth, tanned curve of the genie's collarbone, gently rising and falling with each breath. What did Cas do when he wasn't _summoned,_ there must have been hundreds, thousands of times Cas had been trapped in his vessel for months, maybe years, waiting for someone to find it, unleash him. Where was he when he wasn't _here_?

"Did no one ever teach you it is abysmally rude to stare?"

Dean rubbed his cheek on his pillow and swallowed a grin. "Pot meet kettle," he murmured.

Cas blinked sleepily, studying Dean's face. "Your thoughts are deep for so early a morn."

"You can stop doing that any time now." Damn genie was going to know all his secrets, and it was fucking unsettling, because proximity to the handsome bastard was creating new _secrets_ every day, and Dean was still parsing them into little, manageable compartments in his mind.

Cas chuckled, and the soft, raspy sound wrapped around Dean, an additional layer of warmth in their tiny cocoon of bedding. "Your desires live in your eyes, Dean Winchester, I've no need of clairvoyance."

"I don't know what that means," Dean muttered, shifting closer, wondering why Cas hadn't touched him yet, bossy and demanding and in general making him stupid with want in two point five seconds. He needed the tether of skin to skin contact.

"It means you are still woefully transparent." Cas was apparently reading his mind again, because he lifted a hand to graze his thumb across Dean's bottom lip.

"Why haven't you kissed me?" Dean blurted, immediately blushing, because _what the fuck?_ He hadn't meant to say that, hadn't even known he was thinking it, although the invisible band tightening around his chest told him he _had_ _been_ _thinking it_, for days. It was a glaring omission now, all the times Cas had stared at his mouth, coming so close, making Dean's bones ache in anticipation, only to bleed away, leaving him kiss-less and cranky and _goddammit._ He pressed forward, intent clear.

Cas stopped him with a hand on his chest. "I do not do that."

"What?" Dean asked dumbly.

"Touch." He rubbed his thumb over Dean's lip again. "Mouths to mouths, lips, tongue," he trailed off.

"Why the hell not?" Dean jerked his head back.

Cas' eyes darkened, but he didn't answer.

Dean fell back on his pillow. "Well, fuck you then." He was pouting, he knew it and he hated himself for it, but it didn't seem to matter that he hadn't _known _he wanted the genie to kiss him before, _now_ it was there, welling up from that hidden spot behind his heart, where all the best secrets are kept. Consuming him.

_What did he taste like?_

Cas teased the sheet from Dean's chest. "I could assist you in your morning ablutions."

"No," Dean snapped, yanking the sheet to his armpits. "I'm not in the mood."

"You're always in the mood," Cas replied drily.

"Yeah well sometimes you're a mood killer."

Cas studied him for a long moment. "You may have anything else."

Dean let the words swirl around his brain for a beat before sliding his gaze to the genie. "You might be sorry you offered."

Cas deferred with a nod of his head. "You might be sorry you agreed."

"Hmph," Dean grunted, tapping his fingers on his chest in a rolling rhythm. "I'll think about it."

That teased an indulgent grin from the genie's lips. "I see you are now in the mood. Shall we begin?"

"No!" Dean squirmed, although the genie was right. _Asshole._ The familiar hunger had dipped low in his belly, thickening his blood and shallowing the movement of air through his lungs. "We're pressing pause while I figure something out." He bit into his cheek when Cas sat up on an elbow and yanked the sheet from his body.

"I do not like to be made to wait." The genie's eyes were stormy.

Dean ignored the heaviness between his legs and rolled off the bed. "Sucks to be you." He padded from the room, holding his breath, expecting to be thrown back on his bed and made to come from the force of Cas' fury alone.

His pulse fluttered excitedly; _I should not be feeling so damn hopeful right now. Bad Dean!_

But other than the burn of a gaze on the back of his thighs, he was allowed to leave the room.

He didn't take a full breath until he was in the bathroom, alone.

"That went well," he said to his reflection in the mirror.

…

"Dean!"

Dean banged his head on the underside of a raised hood. "Ow, goddammit, Joanna Beth."

Jo laughed and wiggled the receiver in her hand. "Sorry. Phone."

Dean sighed and wiped his hands on the rag he pulled from his hip pocket. He rolled his neck; he was tired and sore, even though—truthfully—he had slept better since Cas' unexpected arrival than he had in months.

He scanned the garage for the genie; there had been no scruff burning kisses to his belly or any other body part today. Cas was on his best _in the presence of other humans_ behavior.

It was maddening.

It wasn't until he took the phone from Jo that Dean spotted him, standing at the back door, staring across the empty lot behind the shop. It was overgrown and weedy, an eyesore, although in the spring it was filled with wildflowers and sunshine. Dean had bought the lot, hoping to expand one day. He never seemed to have enough surplus cash, though, and the property continued its slow journey back to nature.

"Dean Winchester."

Cas turned when he heard Dean's voice, and Dean froze, completely missing the caller's return greeting because his ears were flooded with the beat of his own heart, tripling as Cas began to move across the garage in his direction. Slow. Predatory. Eyes latched on Dean's mouth.

"Uh, come again?" Dean swallowed.

Cas was behind him now, passing so close Dean bumped the counter with his belly, the genie's body a gentle nudge against his back.

_Where was Jo_, Dean wondered frantically, vision already blurring with pure unadulterated lust, and Cas hadn't even fucking touched him yet. He had decided this morning that he wasn't doing this again, wasn't letting Cas throw him into the abyss—not unless the genie was willing to come apart with him.

That seemed like an all around terrible idea just now, Cas reaching across him to pull a notepad closer, forearm brushing Dean's ribcage, the slow drag of his warm, warm skin pulling Dean's t-shirt askew.

_What the fuck does he need paper for anyway,_ Dean wondered, desperately listening to the caller, and then, _oh shit, I hope he's not writing me a dirty note. Please, please please—_

He ached, his center of gravity pulsing, his body following the retreat of Cas' arm.

_"Mr. Winchester?"_

Dean blinked. "Yeah?"

"_So do you have an opening for me? I've heard you're the best, and this is a very special car."_

The world spun into focus again and Dean exhaled. "And what kind of car is it?" He blanched when the caller answered. "Holy fuck," he wheezed, and then immediately apologized. "Oh God, I'm sorry, I just. Yes. Yeah, I've got room. Bring 'er in."

He hung up, eyes a little glazed, the party in his pants forgotten.

Cas stopped scratching a pen across the filched pad of paper and tilted his head. "Good news?"

"The best news!" Dean said excitedly, reaching over to squeeze his shoulder.

"Does it involve you removing that heinous shirt?"

Dean grinned. "No, better."

Cas went back to scratching the pen across the paper. "Doubtful."

Dean huffed, squinting at the notepad. "What are you writing?"

"Instructions."

Dean blanched, because _penis_ was most definitely one of the words, and maybe that one was _tongue, _and _fucking hell—_

"Instructions for what?" Jo asked, dropping their lunch onto the countertop.

Dean jumped two feet in the air. "Nothing!" he shouted, all the blood in his body pooling between his legs in a rush that nearly knocked him flat.

Cas side eyed him coolly. "I'm preparing Dean's—"

"I just got the best news!" Dean interrupted, snatching the pad off the counter as Jo reached for it.

Jo laughed. "Okay."

Dean ripped the top sheet from the pad and crumpled it into a ball, shoving it into his front pocket at the last second instead of dropping it in the wastebasket.

He ignored the tiny frown brewing between Cas' brows.

"Dude just asked us to restore a 1971 Plymouth Hemi-Cuda convertible!"

Cas and Jo stared, silent.

"A 1971. Plymouth. Hemi-Cu—oh come _on!_" Dean threw his hands in the air.

Jo shrugged and glanced at Cas. "You have any idea what he's yammering on about?"

Cas squinted. "I find it hard to concentrate on anything beyond that ridiculous color."

"Would you shut up about my shirt?" Dean grabbed the hem and yanked the stupid tee over his head, throwing it in Cas' direction, hitting him square in the chest. "There. Is that better?"

The shirt fell to the floor_._

Jo's gaze slid from one man to the other, tongue tucked firmly in cheek.

"Infinitely." Cas picked up the pen, scrawling fresh ink across a new sheet of paper.

Dean tried to ignore the blush climbing his body, jabbing a finger at Jo when she snickered. "Not a word." He grabbed the bag of food and unwrapped a burger, taking a huge bite just for something to do with his hands and mouth.

His goddamn nipples were peaked.

Jo pulled a box of fries out of the bag and pushed the rest toward Cas. "So I hear naked dinner is a thing now?"

"I'm going to kill him," Dean muttered, the flush fully suffusing him, all the way to his scalp.

Jo's giggle was contagious, because even Cas' sternly pursed lips twitched upward, until Dean would almost swear he was smiling.

"I hate you both." Dean grabbed his burger, an iced tea, and a new _Winchester Restoration_ t-shirt out from under the counter and stalked to his office to finish his lunch in peace.


	12. Chapter 12

Jo bitched the entire forty minutes it took her to shop-vac the empty bay in preparation for the new car.

Dean tried to tune her out, while simultaneously trying to avoid an unusually handsy Cas, who must have been suffering the effects of Dean's self-imposed exile from sexy times. He wouldn't admit it in a hundred years, but Dean was pretty miserable too.

But would survive, hell yeah he would, so long as the genie didn't corner him again, the way he had after lunch, wanton and grumpy and touching him in places Dean was still feeling three hours later. He had wedged Dean between the tallest freestanding toolbox and a workbench and shoved a hand deep into his front pocket, fingers spread far too wide to be decent, assuring him in that snooty, gravelly voice that he was '_only retrieving what is mine'_.

When his fingers brushed his (traitorously happy) dick, Dean bit his lip. "That's not yours, you fucker."

Cas had lazily scratched Dean's thigh through the thin cotton pocket—not looking for the goddamn letter at all—before sliding his hand out and patting his –slightly tented—crotch. "Perhaps it would best serve as a bedtime story, anyway."

Then he had waltzed away, throwing his parting shot over his shoulder. "After your bath."

Yeah Dean needed to avoid a repeat of _that_ at all costs.

After that he threw himself into inventorying the Plymouth, rattling off obscure mechanical and construction facts to an amused Jo and bored Cas, who had apparently bonded at some point behind Dean's back.

"What the effing hell is he even talking about?" Jo's gum popped in rapid succession.

Cas tilted his head and peered at Dean through the windshield. "I think he is expressing his love for an inanimate object."

"I can still hear you!" Dean leaned his head out the open window, but he couldn't hide his enthusiasm, didn't really want to, and he waved them both off. _Fuck'em._ They clearly didn't appreciate what a truly historic moment this was for a car fan like Dean.

"Can I have a turn, now?" Jo asked reaching out to brush a fleck of dirt from the hood.

"Don't touch her!" Dean frowned. "And no. I'm inspecting it."

"Sitting behind the wheel is inspecting it. Really, Dean?" Jo rolled her eyes.

"It is!" Dean insisted, unable to hold back a grin. "_This _might be the biggest moment of my career." He climbed from the car and circled it. "Not that it's my favorite, mind you," he quickly added, although Jo had thrown up her hands when he blocked her attempt to sit in the front seat and stomped back to the counter.

Cas followed him, nodding indulgently. "And what _is_ your favorite, Dean Winchester?"

Dean faltered at the genie's husky tone, but _fuck it_, he was in too good a mood to try and decipher what nefarious—yet delicious—things the bastard might be cooking up. At least he wasn't naked, and Jo was still in plain sight, so his pockets were safe. He could fangirl over this car with as much exuberance as he felt, Cas a more attentive and willing listener than Jo had ever been. "Well, no car can match the 1967 Chevy Impala for sheer animal sex appeal," he winked. "But, after that," he nodded his head to the other side of the shop. "I'm pretty happy with that Charger that gives you such a hard on."

Cas' eyes slid to the car in question, it's red-orange hood gleaming under the lights. "It reminds me of you," he murmured, and fuck if Dean knew what to do with _that._

He was saved from responding when a customer dropped in to check on his car, nearly creaming himself when he saw the Plymouth, giving Dean a more enthusiastic audience than Cas.

Jo taught Cas to play gin rummy behind the counter while Dean spent the remainder of the day bouncing around, jubilant, his cheerful whistling echoing from under the chassis. He worked up a good, grimy sweat, his nails the kind of black that would take a solid week to scrub clean. So distracted was he by this nearly perfect day, he didn't notice Cas waiting by the bumper until it was too late, Jo having left an hour ago, the shop locked tight.

"I am well past due sustenance." Cas' frown was palpable when Dean rolled out from under the car.

"So blink over to the diner and grab us some chow, make yourself useful," Dean quipped, too blissfully happy to see the storm until it was too late and then he was irritatingly nude, if predictably turned on. "For fuck's sake, Cas," he muttered, clambering to his feet. He was running out of clothes, at least clothes the damn genie thought were worthy, and frankly, he wasn't made of money. He couldn't afford to keep replacing the things the genie destroyed, and anyway, it wasn't _just _the clothes. It was the casual destruction that kept Dean on edge, because he didn't know yet if it was intentional, or how far he might go. What Dean himself might lose, before this was over.

Cas was on him before his thoughts had fully processed, hot hands searing his flesh when he was slammed into the nearest concrete wall. Dean's poor dick chose that moment to remember it had been woefully neglected all day, while Jo was present and Dean was tinkering with his new toy, absently planning Cas' own debauchery. It twitched pitifully now, bouncing on his thigh as it filled and lengthened, until Dean was panting, straining against the hard grip that pinned his wrists over his head.

"You owe me a pair of work jeans," he ground out between his teeth, trying to remember he was mad.

Cas's eyes never left his mouth, leading Dean to wonder if his earlier fit of pique about the serious lack of kissing around here had been weighing on the genie's mind, if he were considering it now, and _that_ wrecked havoc with a lot more than Dean's libido.

"Take it out of my weekly pay," the genie finally murmured, dipping his head heartstoppingly close to Dean's mouth before glancing off his chin, falling, falling, until sharp teeth sank into the skin above his collarbone.

Dean couldn't have stifled the moan that erupted for a dozen Plymouths, and he thrust his hips upward in frustration, gnawing on his lower lip when he was finally successful and his dick rammed into a hard, denim-clad thigh.

Cas watched him in silence, eyes glancing off his flushed cheeks and red lips, landing on the movement of his hips, and then fucking _smiling_, smug as if he had known all along they would end up here, like this.

Dean briefly considered begging when one of Cas' feet slid forward to trap his support leg, keeping the most pleasurable angle just beyond his reach, but he clamped his teeth together, silently vowing to hold onto the last measly scrap of his dignity if it killed him. His back cramped, a charley horse he knew he was going to regret in the morning, but he couldn't stop the rhythmic rocking, dry humping like he was fifteen fucking years old and not an ounce sorry about it.

He could hear his ragged breathing and stuttered moans, and he should probably be embarrassed about it, because Cas was barely affected at all, _the bastard,_ gaze cool and collected even when he watched Dean paint his leg, the orgasm shuddering through him in waves until he collapsed against the wall, spent.

Cas released his wrists, and with an easy flick of his finger, they were clean.

Dean grunted in annoyance, fighting to catch his breath. "You coulda fixed my pants too."

Cas raised one brow.

Dean glanced down and sighed.

His clothes had vanished, even his socks.

"Cas, c'mon!"

"In the car, Dean Winchester. Now."

"I'm not driving home naked, you kinky sonofabitch."

But Cas wasn't listening, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together thoughtfully, before bringing them to his lips, delicate tongue sweeping outward to taste.

_Fuck,_ Dean shuddered again, grabbing his dick and squeezing as it jerked with the realization Cas was probably tasting _him._

He got in the car without another word.

In the front seat, Cas' palm curved possessively over his thigh, and Dean glanced over in surprise; aside from some midnight spooning, the genie wasn't much for casual touches or displays of affection, but he left his hand there, the tips of his fingers tickling the smooth skin of Dean's inner leg as they drove.

It stayed, even when Dean detoured to City Lake, the sun dipping over the horizon in a splash of vibrant pink, his nerves sparking hot and sweet with the exhibitionism, feeling emboldened and reckless. It was still there when he parked down by the water and proceeded to give Cas a live demonstration of his recent lunch break on that very spot, back when the genie was making him crazy with a hunger that had nothing to do with food.

The leather creaked as his legs flexed and widened, the angle cramped and tight, and Cas' murmurs of enjoyment and approval slowed Dean's hand, drawing it out until he was stretched thin, a razor wire. He teetered on the edge for a blissful, breath-stealing beat.

When he came all over his steering wheel, his hoarse and frustrated cursing coaxed a carefree laugh out of the genie for the first time since Dean had met him. Cas' fingers tightened on Dean's messy thigh briefly, before he leaned over to dig in the glovebox for the necessary materials to clean him—and the car.

Dean relaxed and watched, heart hammering too fast to be simple exertion, an idea taking hold and germinating, a plan for the genie's undoing that was brilliant in its simplicity. He hid his smile and his thoughts, shifting when prompted. "No mumbo jumbo?" he murmured, weirdly content.

"I like to think I'm more thorough than any magic."

The genie took too long on his dick to be merely thorough, though, for which Dean thanked him with a breathy, helpless moan.

He didn't mean to dwell on the implications of the genie's words, that he might be worth the effort, worth the singular, focused attention, but they stayed there, a confusing knot in Dean's chest, long after he started the car and took them home.


	13. Chapter 13

Sam was not amused.

Dean almost made it into the house, nudity undiscovered, even _with_ Cas being a giant voyeuristic dickhead who threatened Dean with forced front porch blow jobs if he didn't park on the street.

At least no one else had seen him.

(He hoped.)

But Sam…Sam had been on the couch when Dean sprinted buck naked through the door, and his indignant shriek had been loud enough to wake the dead.

And then he had done the most surprising thing of all.

He had flung open a book and muttered words that sounded worryingly reminiscent of Cas, and then the genie had dissolved into a swirling, angry mass of blue smoke, whipping around them both before disappearing between the dusty pages. The book slammed shut and fell, rattling on the floorboards like a thing alive before ceasing, still.

"What did you do!" Dean shouted.

"Uh, maybe you could go put some pants on. Then we'll talk."

Dean covered his crotch with one hand and jabbed a finger at his brother with the other. "You bring him back!"

"Pants, Dean," Sam said tiredly. When Dean didn't so much as twitch in the direction of his bedroom, he sighed. "Dean—look. He's taking advantage of you. You're just too close to see it. You can't trust him."

"Yes, I can," Dean snapped.

"You ate dinner naked!"

"And I liked it!"

The brothers stared at each other for a long moment, but Sam broke first, sighing again and bending over to retrieve the book. "Just put some clothes on and I promise. I'll give you the book and tell you how to release him if you really want to."

…

The book sat on the coffee table between them, and if you didn't know better you might think it was any other flea market find. It was dirty, ancient leather cover worn thin, once-gilded edges faded to a soft sage. Dean resisted the temptation to hold it in his lap. He was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Cas, _his _Cas, was somehow trapped in the pages of the innocuous-appearing tome.

"I've been reading—"

Dean snorted, and then rolled his eyes at Sam's black look. "Sorry. Please continue."

"I've been researching djinn folklore. It's pretty complicated, actually, and there's not just Arabic lore, there's some obscure Persian references too, and then Islamic folkore says—"

"Do you have a point?" Dean interrupted. He had a raging headache, and his back hurt—that damn charleyhorse—and he couldn't believe he was even thinking it, but all he really wanted to do was lay in bed and watch Food Network on his tiny 19-inch hand-me-down TV while Cas issued scathing commentary about ingredient quality, curled into Dean's side, naked as the day he was born. (Or however it was genie's came into being.)

"My point is, the stories differ slightly, but the end result is basically the same. The Djinn hate humans. And they can't be trusted."

"Cas is different," Dean insisted, the jut of his chin stubborn and square.

"Yeah, he is," Sam conceded with an emphatic nod, much to Dean's surprise. "In fact, I think he's completely different. I don't think he's any of these—" he waved his hand over the pile of books on the end table. "At all. Just when I think he's most like one of them, he's not, and he sort of morphs into a completely different thing. I think he's a hybrid or something."

"A hybrid. Fuck," Dean chuckled and rubbed his temples. "Sammy, would you listen to you? Us?" He shook his head and laughed again, tapping the oldest book, the most important one. "What are we doing?"

Sam's mouth worked until he shrugged cautiously. "I'm not sure? Figuring it out?"

"Figuring _what_ out exactly? What I'm doing fucking around with a—potentially deadly but damned hot—magical _dude_, for Christ's sake?"

"You know the dude part doesn't matter to me, right?"

"It doesn't? Cause I don't know as Mom or Dad or Bobby or Ellen are gonna see it that way? Do you?" Sam's eyes turned sad and Dean rubbed his head again. "I just—" he sighed heavily. "He makes me crazy. Like _really_ crazy."

"I noticed," Sam grinned.

Dean rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "But he's funny. Even when I want to smack him, half the time I'm still swallowing a laugh. And I don't know, I," he shrugged. "I like the surprises. The crazy weirdness. Waking up and wondering what the fuck he's going to do today. Where I'm going to—"

Sam cleared his throat, shaking his head pleadingly.

Dean grinned. "You know," he winked before continuing. "I haven't really worried about all the other stuff."

"The Djinn. The wishes."

Dean shook his head. "No. It doesn't matter."

"Well, it might," Sam said, pulling a thin volume out of the stack. "According to _this_, there _is_ a theory that the Djinn are a precursor to some other pretty powerful supernatural beings. Vampire. Incubus. Shapeshifter." Sam wrinkled his nose and pointed at Dean's neck. "How long have you had that bruise?"

Dean frowned skeptically and rubbed the days-old mark. "So Cas is a vampire sex demon genie hybrid now?"

Sam snorted. "No. I don't know. He's something though, and until we know what, I think we both should be careful."

"And by both, you mean me." Dean tucked his tongue in his cheek. "Maybe I just taste really good."

"Dean," Sam closed his eyes in disgust.

"Look, Sam." Dean reached over to squeeze his brother's knee. "I appreciate the advice. But I'm trying to figure a hell of a lot of stuff out right now, and the least of my worries is whether my new—and extremely bossy—naked roommate needs to A—get me off repeatedly to survive or B—might occasionally use a little too much tooth."

"Dean!"

"All in all," Dean chuckled. "There are worse ways to go."

"Dean, for God's sake." Sam was practically humming in embarrassment, two seconds away from plugging his ears and la-la-la-ing his way back to his bedroom. When he saw Dean rubbing the mark at his collarbone with a fond look on his face, he squeezed the bridge of his nose in frustration. "Fine. But I'm researching, just in case you end up a sex-toy to the king of hell or something."

Dean stared at the ceiling for a beat. "I'm still not seeing the problem, here."

Sam threw up his hands in disgust and stalked to his bedroom.

Dean grinned and opened the book.

…

To say Cas was pissed was an understatement.

When he erupted from the pages, his eyes were quite literally on fire, if fire were blue, and Dean had to swallow several times to find his voice.

"Now, Cas—"

He didn't really have a chance to say anything else, because Cas hauled him into the bedroom and slammed the door—a cue for Sam to turn up the music, Dean thought in amusement because Taylor Swift erupted from behind his brother's door seconds later.

His clothes were discarded the old fashioned way, i.e. by Cas ripping his jeans to his knees with his bare hands before practically melting Dean's boxers off his ass with a furious glare.

Literally. They began to smoke.

"Okay, okay," Dean murmured soothingly, hooking his fingers in the elastic waistband and tugging the stretchy cotton over an already excited dick.

Apparently it _liked_ being thrown over someone's shoulder and carried around like a sack of fucking potatoes.

Especially if there was the potential for kinky fun times with a possibly immortal being of the sexy sucking kind.

Cas was gloriously naked the entire time, materializing from the book apparently fed up with any of that human foreplay bullshit, because he basically threw Dean to the bed and straddled his hips, dropping his mouth to his neck to run sharp teeth along the taut tendon that was shaking with some grade a violent tremors there.

The straddling rendered Dean completely mute.

The teeth made him buck in a strange mix of fear-excitement he should probably be ashamed of.

When his earlobe was sucked between two lips that he fucking _craved_ on his own, he turned his head into Cas' neck and kissed the soft skin there.

Cas froze.

Dean hesitated and then kissed him again, dragging his lips across the warm skin to his shoulder, biting him playfully, wondering what Cas would do if he asked him straight out if he was a _vampire._

He snorted, which might have killed the mood a little, because Cas sat up, one brow tartly arched.

Dean kinda wished he didn't look so magnificent sitting there on top of him and bit back a frustrated groan.

"Never do that again," Cas glared.

"What? Kiss you?" Dean wiggled, trying to scoot Cas' bum into the cradle of his hips. He wondered what the genie would do if he was actually successful in enacting his plan, flip the switch and reverse their seduced/seducer positions.

"Banish me," Cas gritted through his teeth, eyes flashing.

Dean stilled, hands coming up to rest on Cas' hips. "Cas, I didn't. We didn't," he said earnestly. When the genie's face remained impassive he squeezed. "I promise. I wouldn't."

"Not even if you were unhappy with your wish?"

Dean shook his head. "I'm not worried about that." He smoothed his hands as far as he could reach, tucking them around Cas' waist and pulling him down until they were flush. He hesitated, holding his breath, but took a chance and kissed the genie's shoulder again. "I promise," he whispered, dragging his mouth up Cas' neck to his ear.

Cas relaxed, nuzzling at Dean's neck. "What are you doing, Dean Winchester?"

Dean grinned, running his hands up and own the strong back. "I have no fucking idea."

Cas laughed softly, nibbling Dean's ear again. "I have a feeling I may have underestimated you."

"Oh yeah? Too late now, huh?" Dean teased, wondering if Cas could feel the strange fluttering of his heart. "So, you, uh, feel up to some Food Network?"

Cas lifted his head and bit his lip, considering. "If you sit in my lap so that I may play, yes."

Dean swallowed and closed his eyes, a red hot blush climbing his cheeks. "Jesus Christ, Cas," he muttered.

"Have we a deal, Dean?"

And that was how twenty minutes later, Dean was coming all over both their laps, a possible vampire-incubus-genie hybrid's hands all over him, refusing to let Dean participate do more than writhe and moan, teasing an orgasm from him while Nigella licked chocolate mousse from her fingertips and promised from here on out, it would all be easy.


	14. Chapter 14

Sam froze in the kitchen doorway.

Dean and Cas were seated at the table, two bowls of Cheerios and three of Sam's old books between them.

Dean grinned. "Mornin' Professor."

"What's going on?" Sam asked, peeking under the table to make sure everyone was wearing pants.

Dean snorted. "Subtle."

"As subtle as the t-shirt tied over the shower bar?" Sam shot back.

Dean flushed bright pink, glaring at a serene Cas next to him. "I thought you said you cleaned up," he hissed.

"I am no house wench, Dean Winchester."

"I really need to get my own place," Sam muttered, digging his own cereal bowl from the top rack of the dishwasher.

Dean couldn't help the satisfied smile that followed the blush; he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he would make a fine slut.

Last night after Nigella, he had wiggled and rubbed and pleaded, in general making a horny nuisance of himself until a sexily irritated Cas got fed up with his squirming and introduced Dean once and for all to the _butt stuff_.

Not the full on, Technicolor experience, no. The genie was still holding himself apart, aloof from the whole proceedings, much to Dean's chagrin, using hands and mouth to give Dean's ass a fucking hot massage that left him begging for more. Much more.

For the first time in his life, Dean wanted desperately to be the body that accepted another.

Now he chewed a spoonful of crunchy oat circles and contemplated this very real, and personally amusing, situation. _How to get dick._

Truthfully, if Cas offered to fuck him right now on top of the kitchen table, Dean would drop his pants and bend over. The precursor had been that good. He had always assumed that being a _bottom _(he blushed again just thinking it) was somehow emasculating, effeminate. When he had considered it (and he _had_ considered it, particularly since the morning he woke up with a blazing hot genie in a Wichita motel), he had assumed he would feel less like…himself. That he would no longer be Dean. Dean, who worked on cars, and grilled steaks, and drank beer, and liked _women_ for God's sake.

But Cas would crook one eyebrow, or run a finger down the back of his neck, and Dean was a goner. He was naked and spread and begging in an easy half minute, and not an ounce ashamed about it. He _wanted_ it. It was liberating, to let someone else take the drivers seat, tell _him_ what to do, what to wear, to take him to the edge of his tolerance and then hold him there, keening, until he was past the point of coherence, past greed or simple satisfaction. He was stripped down to the barest qualities of himself, and frankly, he couldn't imagine letting anyone but Cas see him like that. Ever.

He was even _asking_ for things, kinky ass, embarrassing things that he would _never_ have asked for in a million years before. Things he didn't know he wanted. Things he didn't know someone else would do.

And Cas had no shame. He would do anything, not just once, but multiple times. If it made Dean feel good, Cas was interested. He was a fucking _monster_ of course. He laughed at Dean's discomfort and willfully withheld orgasms for the smallest, most insignificant infractions, and more than once Dean had seriously considered murdering him in his sleep.

Except he really needed that bastard's dick.

A mix of all of the above had coalesced the night before, resulting in Dean finding himself strapped to that damn shower bar after shyly admitting he wanted to be tied up. Cas had been so fucking proud of him for asking, Dean thought he was going to suck his goddamn brain out. He hadn't, but he _had_ sucked until Dean's moans echoed off the tile—an embarrassingly noisy tribute to the most amazing blowjob of his life—before popping off with a smack and a smile and waltzing from the bathroom, leaving Dean alone and panting, hands knotted over the shower bar with his own damn t-shirt, desperately trying to hold onto the memory of the genie's mouth on him. And maybe Dean was being a girl about it, but he wanted that moment to last, the first time the genie had taken him in his mouth, the way those long, dark lashes had fluttered over golden brown cheeks, hiding the flashes of blue, fingers biting into Dean's hips to hold him still. It had taken him ten agonizingly long and cold minutes to worm his way free, and even then his pride stayed tucked away in that magical place where it hid from Cas, while he crawled under the covers and rode the ridge of the genie's pretty hip until he was exhausted and spent.

_Bathtime,_ Dean smiled contentedly. An addictive ritual, Cas' hands intimately familiar with all parts of _Dean_, but in an infuriatingly blasé, nonsexual manner that drove him completely mad (although _nonsexual_ was relative; Dean had certainly never taken the time to bathe his nipples so thoroughly before). If this was some sort of experimental mind game Cas was playing, it might actually be working, because he fucking wanted the genie like he had never wanted anything or anyone in his life. And he was basically willing to do whatever he was asked to get it.

"Dean!" Sam barked, slamming his cereal bowl on the table, milk sloshing over the sides.

Dean grinned when he realized he had been unconsciously rubbing his wrists.

Cas chuckled, nudging his knee affectionately. "Perhaps we should limit your sexual gratification to the hours Sam is out of residence?"

"Cas!" Dean wheezed when a Cheerio lodged in his windpipe.

Cas thumped him on the back.

"Oh my God," Sam moaned, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "Can we just talk about whatever _else_ it is you two are doing? Unrelated to—" he waved his hand in the vicinity of Dean's lap. "Anything to do with _that_?"

Dean coughed self-consciously, the genies palm rubbing in tantalizing circles on his thigh, moving incrementally closer to his crotch. "We're going to free Cas," he said bluntly.

Cas withdrew his hand. "It is impossible, yet your brother insists."

"Nothing's impossible, Cas," Dean said, green eyes snapping and dark.

"This is." Cas looked at Sam. "Tell him."

Sam hesitated.

"Tell him," Cas' voice lowered.

It would have been menacing, fear-inducing, at least before Dean knew him, before he had had that mouth on him, rubbing soft kisses into his skin everywhere but his lips, because Dean now understood that would be too close, too cherished. Kissing Dean would mean they were equal, that there were hearts involved, feelings beyond sexual pleasure.

Kissing meant it would hurt when he was gone.

And Dean wanted it. Because even more than he desired Cas' body, he wanted _Cas._

"I haven't read a single instance of a genie being freed," Sam said slowly.

Cas nodded once in satisfaction.

"But that doesn't mean it's impossible," Sam added, shrugging when Cas glared. "I'm sorry, but it doesn't. It just means no one ever wrote about it."

"This," Cas ground out between his teeth, holding his arms out over the table. "_These_ mean it is impossible." Dark tendrils of ink appeared, looping around his wrists and up his forearms, an intricate pattern over his skin.

"Whoa," Dean breathed, reaching out to touch, wincing when Cas snatched his arm away. "Sorry," he mumbled. "Cas—"

"No." Cas shoved away from the table. "I indulged you because I have become fond of you." His mouth twisted sardonically. "I know better, a thousand years have shown me, and yet here I am. A fool. But this is a legacy I cannot escape. You would do well to make your wishes and allow me fair leave."

He disappeared, leaving Dean and Sam staring at each other over the table.

"Shit," Sam sighed.

"Shit," Dean agreed with a melancholy shrug.

"He's in love with you." Sam toyed with the edge of one of the books.

"What?" Dean blinked. "No he's not. He _wants _me, I'll give you that. And he's," he shrugged again, the movement in sluggish tandem with the sharp, thudding pang in his heart. "He's _fond_ of me, I guess," he trailed off.

"You've always liked to play dumb, even though you're the smartest person I know," Sam said angrily. Dean's mouth fell open in shock. "But in this instance? You need to pull your head out of your ass tout suite so we can figure this shit out. Before he—" Sam jabbed his thumb in the direction of Dean's bedroom. "He—tricks you somehow, seals his own fate in a stubborn display of sacrifice."

Dean stared at his brother, a rush of affection suffusing him. "And since when did you climb on the whole _Dean and Cas forever_ bandwagon?"

Sam huffed. "Since I pulled my own head out of my ass and realized you were in love with him too." He flipped open the closest book and pushed it in Dean's direction. "Now let's get started."


	15. Chapter 15

It took Dean thirty-four minutes to find him. Thirty-four heartstopping, nerve-wracking minutes, in which he had called to him, paced the bedroom, and shook _the book_, fanning its pages and pleading under his breath.

He ripped off his t-shirt and socks and had his pants unzipped, slipping them from his hips as he strode through the empty kitchen, using the only lure he had left, exceedingly glad Sam was already gone. That was when he spotted him, standing next to the tire swing in the backyard, a breeze lifting the dark strands of his hair. Dean had to pause on the steps, steady himself with one hand.

The screen slammed, breaking the quiet morning.

Cas turned, tilting his head. "Are you aware that your pecker is visible, should Mrs. Murphy make an appearance?"

Dean did up his zipper. "Don't try to distract me with your cute slang, I'm mad at you." He crossed the damp grass, cut blades clinging to his bare toes, until he was at the boundary of the genie's bubble, then kept right on going, pushing in until he could feel the warmth of the brown skin under borrowed clothes, until Cas' hands reached for him, the way he had known they would. Because as bossy and demanding as the asshole was, Dean was also starting to figure a few things out.

Cas liked touching him.

"I was unaware of your penchant for my _cute_ slang." The genie's voice was low, intimate.

"Really mad," Dean warned, ignoring the teasing twinkle and the sort of adorable, apologetic quirk of the genie's mouth. He pointed, stern. "Don't ever disappear like that again."

Cas' expression cooled, even as his gaze heated, raking down Dean's body, all the way to his grassy toes and back. "Do not command me, human, unless you are willing to accept the full brunt of my power."

Dean crowded closer, ignoring the sharp snap of fiery blue and the whoosh of accompanying current, molecules of air disintegrating, like a lion batting a fly. "Apparently you haven't been paying attention, _genii,_ to just how much I'm willing to accept," he growled, mentally preparing to be slammed naked to the wet earth amidst Mrs. Murphy's prize-winning squash and wondering if he dare kiss the bastard first.

To his surprise, Cas broke, eyes falling to the ground, hands still clutching at the bare skin of Dean's waist, and he thought about the symbols that had wound round and round the genie's arms, the manacled shape of them on the deceptively delicate bones of his wrists. A smattering of insecurity prevented Dean from gathering him close and coddling, although _God,_ he wanted to. If he never saw that desperate hollow look in Cas' eyes again it would be too soon. He wondered if the genie was battling the same nervous flutters in his stomach, if he wore the same ache behind his breastbone, a dull, throbbing anxiety somehow made worse when they were apart.

Yet…they still weren't exactly how Sam had interpreted them, not really. They were sex and power plays and a hell of a lot of chemistry, but Dean didn't know if Cas preferred chocolate or vanilla, and right now that seemed like a really important thing to know, along with about a thousand other really important things.

And maybe this was uncharted territory for both of them—it sure as hell was for Dean—but he was willing to ride it out a little longer, he _wanted _to, eager to make the effort, go the distance, whatever the cost. Even if he was, at heart, a coward, the ominous prospect of a Cas-sized hole in his life should everything go pear-shaped looming shadowy and dark, mocking him as he stood next to the unused tire swing, a family home without a family, waiting for Cas to look at him, to see all the things Dean didn't know how to say.

He wasn't sure how to mesh what they were, with what they might be, but Dean thought he might have at least a basic idea of where to start. He tentatively touched Cas' wrist, where the darkest ink had been, gentle when the genie flinched. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked quietly.

Cas' eyes met his, morning birdsong, and deep, deep blue, cool, crisp air, and the first touch of autumn in the leaves.

_I'm in over my head,_ Dean thought a little desperately.

"No." And it was gravel on glass, and somehow okay.

Dean nodded, his fingers gliding over the genie's knuckles to twine their hands together.

Cas blinked in confusion, tugging, but Dean held firm.

"C'mon," Dean murmured, backing away. Cas frowned, but Dean knew he had won when he took the first hesitating step.

"Your sweatshop duties will be delayed if we do not leave immediately."

Dean snorted. "The garage is not a sweatshop, you moron. And I don't care. I'm the boss and we're playing hooky." Cas' confused head tilt tickled the sleeping butterflies to life, and they swam up and around the hard bundle of nerves in Dean's chest, soothing and sweet. He bit his lip. "Why, you got other plans?"

"If it means I am not confined to the boring sameness of those four walls, then I am, as you say, all yours," Cas replied drily.

Dean ignored the jab and grinned, reminding himself to breathe. "That's the spirit." He dragged him into the kitchen, pushing him into a seat at the table while he retrieved bread and lunchmeat, chips and cookies and soft drinks, hands steady and heart calm as he went to work.

"Does _hooky_ require vast quantities of inedible food, then?"

"Shut up," Dean threw over his shoulder, nodding toward the laundry room. "Go grab that blue cooler off the shelf above the dryer."

Cas raised one brow.

"Please." Dean winked.

The genie rolled his eyes, grumbling under his breath about tiresome humans. When he returned, he stood too close as Dean packed up more food than they could possible consume in a day, elbows knocking companionably.

"Are you expecting company?"

Dean hid his smile at Cas' frown. "Jealous?"

"No."

"Liar," Dean chuckled, making the genie jump when he smacked a kiss to his cheek. He enjoyed Cas' heightened color when he ushered him out the door shortly after. He should keep the genie off balance a little more often; it was a good look on him.

"The glove box is out of wet wipes," Cas remarked absently when Dean pulled the Impala into a parking spot at the lake.

Dean blushed in spite of himself and climbed from the car. When he reached over the back seat to retrieve the cooler, he winked. "That's what the water's for."

He was rewarded when Cas' eyes fell to his lap, a small smile playing at the edge of his mouth. "Get a movie on _genii. _Your man is hungry."

The trunk held fishing gear and lawn chairs, and maybe a blanket or two for later, and it took a good fifteen minutes to claim and set up their spot at the edge of the water, between a family with about a dozen toddlers (okay it was four, but it felt like a hundred) and a decrepit pair of old-timers, waxing poetic about the one that got away. He sassed the genie one time too many, relishing the opportunity to order _Cas_ around for a change, and gave an unmanly squeak when a firm hand grasped his right butt cheek.

"I tire of your insolence."

_Bad butterflies, bad bad bad,_ Dean thought helplessly. _And bad dick too._ He licked his lips. "Well, then you're in for a long day." And he shouldn't be baiting him, he _really really _shouldn't, not when Cas had that glint in his eye and a hand on Dean's ass. He stifled a moan, biting his lip hard enough to bleed when those blasted fingers traveled south, tickling his inseam. "Uncle, uncle!"

The bastard genie looked practically regal when he set him firmly aside and ordered, "Feed me."

So Dean did. It was turkey and Swiss on whole grain for Cas, and honey ham and cheddar on sourdough for Dean, with a shared plate of Cheetos balls that rolled around the Styrofoam plate every time one of them breathed.

"This is appalling."

Dean rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "Just eat it, you big baby." He caught a wayward orange ball before it fell to the grass and held it out, snorting when Cas' face was the picture of revulsion as he inspected it. "You think too much."

"You are too cavalier with your emotions," Cas shot back, tentatively biting the corn puff in half. He chewed thoughtfully. "It is bad. But not as bad as I feared."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "It's junk food. It's supposed to be bad. And no, I'm not."

Cas shrugged. "You care too much about things you cannot change."

Dean shifted and several Cheetos fell to the ground. "Maybe I care because I believe I _can_ change them."

"Then you are a fool."

Dean barked a laugh. "At least we agree on that."

The silence stretched as they ate, but it wasn't uncomfortable, a mutual—if wary—truce. When they took their trash to a pair of dumpsters by the restroom facilities, a little girl bumped Cas' leg as she ran past, leaving behind a muddy handprint on his jeans. Dean grabbed his wrist when his finger twitched. "No finger flicking the children," he murmured.

"Spoilsport."

Dean watched the tow-headed babies at the next campsite line up for a round of hand sanitizer. "You don't like kids?" he asked, voice carefully neutral. Cas' bland look told him he wasn't quite as blasé as he had hoped.

"Not other people's children, no."

"You have kids?" Dean's stomach twisted, an ugly spurt of jealousy while he digested Cas' words, a sudden stark vision of the genie with a wife, a family, happy and smiling and—

"You may cease your current train of thought," the genie said far more gently than necessary, than Dean deserved. He gathered Dean's hand in his own and squeezed. "It was a very long time ago, and they are gone."

Dean stared. "You were human."

Cas' slight shrug was his only answer.

"Then," Dean swallowed. "Why? How?" He tried to imagine the circumstances that would lead to Cas becoming trapped, a djinn or whatever he was.

"I thought we were not having this conversation today."

"I never said that," Dean muttered, cheeks warm, the old man in the camp next to theirs taking in their joined hands with a rueful shake of his head.

"I did." Cas surveyed the lake. "I disapprove of this location. There are few areas conducive to nudity." He shielded his eyes from the sun. "Particularly the pale skin of your—"

"Cas!" Dean blushed a little harder, but squeezed the fingers wrapped around his, because maybe they weren't having the conversation _today,_ but _not today_ wasn't _never_, and it eased his nervous tension. "Nakedness aside, how do you feel about fishing?"


	16. Chapter 16

Cas was a terrible fisherman. He talked when he should be quiet and contemplative, he reeled his line in way too fast, and he had the annoying habit of staring at Dean's ass whenever he bent over the bucket of worms (because Cas refused to bait his own hook), but Dean still wasn't sure how he had lived without this, the uneven bursts of frustration and longing in his gut.

He almost felt guilty at Cas' downright pissed expression when first Sam and Jo, then Mary and John and Bobby and Ellen appeared, just as the sky deepened to dusk. Then their party grew again, when Ash hitched a ride with Benny and Andrea, and they were all there, all of Dean's family, crowded and loud and _some_ of them (okay, one) obnoxiously giving Dean knowing winks until he threatened to throw her over his knee and spank her ass if she didn't _cut it the fuck out_. To which Cas' eyes became downright lethal and Dean had to drag him into the bushes and grind against the sharp cut of his hip until the possessive glint was gone and the genie was suitably mollified.

It was too chaotic, too familiar for Dean to be completely petrified, but nerves still snuck up on him when Cas wandered off, when Mary or Bobby or Ellen ensnared the genie in conversation and he wasn't available to intervene. More than once he had to slap Jo's hands away as she patted his back soothingly, watching him watch Cas from too fucking far away, as the genie charmed his family even if his presence confused the hell out of them at first.

In that hierarchical way all families have, Cas was promptly labeled _Dean's,_ and somehow that was enough.

Dean breathed a little easier after that.

Bobby hooked Mary and Ellen's ice cream freezers to a little generator in the back of his pickup bed, and bitched at Ash until he promised to keep a close eye on the slow turning cranks. They built a fire and set up camp, and from the back of someone's vehicle a guitar appeared, it's lilting melody carrying over the happy sounds until Dean thought he might burst from sheer contentment.

…

From his perch on the periphery, the genie observed the Winchester friends and family intertwining until he wasn't sure he remembered who belonged to whom. He should be uneasy, uncomfortable; he should want to escape, hide in Dean's bedroom in the little house across town, with it's annoying clutter and Dean's horrible taste in food. _Where was his unease?_ he wondered. A wave of melancholy hung over him and he fought to shake it off when he felt Dean's eyes on him. He sensed this gathering was for him; not a test, per se, but an olive branch. Dean's stubborn way of showing Cas he was serious, committed even, to proving him wrong.

The woman called Andrea passed him on her way to the ladies side of the restroom and showers and held out the baby girl she carried on her hip. "Cas, can you take her for just a few minutes? I need to visit the little girls room."

Her smile was too sweet, her face innocently trusting, and Cas found himself with an armful of baby girl before he could blink.

It had been a long time. _Too long_, he thought, the bitter taste of loss clogging the back of his throat.

…

Across the fire, Dean was whittling a pile of sticks into sharp points, passing them to his dad for hot dogs. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Cas stiffen as Andrea approached, hiding a grin when the genie slowly began to sway, locked in a solemn stare off with the baby. After a minute or two of frozen contemplation, Katie cooed and patted Cas' face, and if Dean didn't know better, he would swear he saw a smile.

The pair walked the perimeter of the campsite, stopping when Katie pointed and babbled, clapping her hands absently for emphasis, and Cas would answer her, his lips barely moving as he talked and nodded, his palm returning to her lace-clad bottom to pat now and then.

Dean would give a hundred bucks to know what the genie was saying to the baby. As he watched, Cas hesitantly nuzzled her blonde curls, before touching his lips to her temple.

He was there with a freshly speared hot dog to replace the baby when Andrea came for her. "Weiner for your thoughts," he quipped, passing Cas the stick.

Cas looked at it dubiously. "Am I supposed to understand the significance of spearing meat which is already dead?"

"Don't be a smartass." Dean turned him toward the fire. "And go stick your weiner in the fire like a good little genie." He panicked when Cas walked right over to his dad, because Dean wasn't quite ready for that confrontation—not that it would necessarily be a confrontation—but John was _John_, and Cas was Cas. _Shit_.

"So, Castiel, what do you again?"

Dean opened his mouth to answer, but Cas beat him to the punch. "I am regrettably without gainful employment at the moment."

Dean groaned inwardly.

John's gaze slid to his son and then back to Cas. "So how did you meet Dean?"

"We have a mutual friend."

And that was that. It was smooth, and simple, and Cas' delivery so matter of fact, there was no reason to question it, at least not the truth behind it, although Dean could see the wheels turning in his dad's dark eyes. The how and the why of Cas being here, _here,_ among Dean's close family and friends, a place you would bring a lover or a spouse.

Not an acquaintance.

_Yeah, the wheels they were a'turnin._

"Dean says you're not much of a fisherman."

"Dad!" Dean flushed, smiling apologetically at Cas, whose brow wrinkled in annoyance, and it shouldn't be cute—the dude could probably fry them all faster than the weenie currently blazing on the end of his stick—but it was. Stupidly cute (and more than a little hot, when his deep blue eyes met Dean's with a warning. _You'll pay for that later)._

"Like Dean has any room to talk," Bobby grumbled, yanking Cas' smoking stick from the flames. "It's done unless you want to eat straight up charcoal."

"Hey," Dean complained weakly, although he welcomed any excuse to drag Cas away from his dad, away from deeper scrutiny. No sense in tempting fate.

Cas, surprisingly, took to thoroughly blackened hot dogs like a duck to water and demanded (in a goddamn too sexy gravel-laced voice) that Dean immediately make three more.

Dean ignored the strange look on his dad's face then too.

As well as the one that followed him and Cas to their sleeping bags, long after midnight, when the night-cooled air snuck through the sleepy campers, and urged them all to bed.

Safe behind a gigantic mound that could only be Sammy, Dean wiggled close to the heat rolling off the genie.

"Naked skin to skin contact is a proven transference of warmth," Cas murmured.

"Shhh." Dean glanced around, the quiet whispers and rustling of makeshift bedding indicating not everyone was asleep. He grinned at the genie's wry expression in the moonlight. "You can't say naked when my dad is within earshot."

"Mmmm," Cas hummed noncommittally, reaching into Dean's unzipped sleeping bag to tug him closer, leaving a warm hand on his hip when Dean rolled to his side.

"I guess we're too late for fireflies," Dean yawned, blinking sleepily. The stars were out though, and they were thick and plush in the midnight sky. He absolutely wasn't making comparisons to Cas' eyes. "I saw you kiss that baby," he whispered, shivering at a chill. "Don't think I didn't."

Cas tucked the sleeping bag up around Dean's ear. "Jealous?"

"Yes," Dean said petulantly, and out of spite (and a little bit of daring) dipped forward to press his lips to the hollow of Cas' throat. It was right there, the bastard, tan and smooth and achingly soft. Cas' fingers carded through his hair, holding him instead of pushing him away, slow, soothing strokes until Dean sighed and nuzzled into him. "That's nice."

"Mmmm," Cas hummed noncommittally.

When he tugged on the hem of Dean's t-shirt, dragging it slowly up his stomach, Dean popped open one eye. "My _dad._"

Cas ignored him and maneuvered the shirt over his arms, tossing it aside and covering Dean's mouth when he opened it to protest. "Your _dad_."

"Shhh!" Dean mumbled around the fingers on his lips, briefly considering what a truly terrible idea this impromptu family camping trip was as the genie summarily rid him of his boxers. Cas' hands roamed over his bare skin, slow, light strokes that were somehow both nonsexual and still completely arousing. A palm over his butt, down his thigh, grazing the inside of his knee and the seam at his groin. Gliding softly over his pubic bone and lightly fondling his dick, until Dean, desperate, had to bury his face in Cas' neck again to ground himself.

"Cas," he whispered, but the genie didn't stop, touching him everywhere, over and over, one hand then both, until Dean had to bite into his cheek to remain silent, Cas' head following his hands with hesitant, slow sweeps of his lips and tongue. He was delicately licking the dusky peak of a nipple when on the other side of the fire, someone sneezed.

Dean froze, but the asshole _genii_—who was literally _driving him mad_—didn't so much as flinch. He just kept right on sipping at Dean's skin, _all_ of Dean's skin, his head disappearing into the opening of the sleeping bag when he sensed Dean was at the edge of his (admittedly poor) tolerance, and taking him into his mouth.

It was a silent cry, Dean's fisted hand buried between his own lips, teeth cutting into his knuckles, and he wondered how _this_ was less intimate than claiming his mouth. His heart hammered furiously against his ribs while Cas brought him back to Earth, more delicate swipes of tongue on sensitive areas, teeth where the pretty marks wouldn't show in the morning, hands and mouth and nose and lips a benediction, bringing Dean into sensory overload until he was trembling with exhaustion and something that felt an awful lot like love.

"Sleep, Dean," Cas whispered, curling around him protectively, shielding his naked body from the night.


	17. Chapter 17

"I literally hate you," Sam grumbled, scrubbing his face.

Dean blushed hotly, wiggling the rest of his ass into his wayward boxers, wondering where the hell Cas had gotten off to. He had awoken to the sounds of the camp stirring, freezing because his own personal space heater had vacated their shared sleeping bag. "Admit it Sammy, you're just jealous," he whispered.

Sam smirked at him. "That what you're going to tell dad if he asks what you and Cas were up to so late last night?"

Dean threw his travel pillow at Sam's big dumb head and set off for the retrooms to relieve himself. And then find Cas.

…

"It's very good," Cas nodded, accepting another bite from Mary's big wooden spoon. When she had begun cooking over the campfire, the smells had been too enticing to ignore.

"Do you cook, Cas?" Mary asked, setting the skillet aside and opening a packet of tortillas.

"There was a time that I did."

Cas' eyes were far away and Mary bit her lip, carefully lining the bottom of a new skillet with tortillas. "Do you have family in your country?"

Startled, Cas blinked.

Mary shrugged lightly. "I studied linguistics in college before the boys were born. Your accent is lovely. Middle Eastern?"

Cas hesitated. "Yes. Egypt."

"That's wonderful. I've always wanted to go. I was very jealous of Dean's trip to Africa."

When she smiled, it was sunshine and warmth, and Cas forgot himself for a moment. "Have you ever been?"

"Me? No," she sighed. "But I do envy him. It was a wonderful opportunity for a man like Dean, to see a part of the world not many people do. And he met you."

Cas accepted the mug of coffee she offered. "You—surprise me," he said carefully.

Mary's face was thoughtful as she flipped the tortillas. "Life has taught me that sometimes you need to be willing to accept things, even if you don't understand them." She smiled again. "I love Dean, very much."

The _so do I_ was on the tip of Cas' tongue_,_ and it was so stunning, he very nearly staggered under the weight of the admission. _So do I._

The sharp cry of a baby first drew his attention, but the man sauntering toward him across the little campsite, a painfully handsome figure made no less so by sleepy grin or messy hair, stole his breath.

_So do I._

…

"You were awfully quiet today," Dean noted, taking Cas' fishing pole and carefully laying it in the Impala's trunk beside his own. When he felt Cas' eyes linger on him, he rubbed his cheeks self-consciously. "What? Do I have something on my face?"

"No." Cas turned away.

Dean watched in consternation as the genie climbed into the Impala's passenger seat and firmly shut the door. "Well, all right then," he muttered, wondering what in the hell had gotten into him.

It had been a good day. After breakfast, they had gone fishing, and when the sun was high, they had jumped in the frigid water, until Dean's lips had turned blue and Cas had very nearly bodily carted him out, Sam's laughter ringing through the trees. At some point when he wasn't looking, Cas had apparently bonded with his mom, because she fussed over him all afternoon, taking a sunblock stick to his nose (which, Dean wished he had thought to record on his cell phone, because Cas' indulgence of her mothering was fucking adorable).

He hesitated before turning the key in the ignition. There was a palpable tension in the car, a low note of uneasiness that he hadn't felt since the morning he had woken up in Wichita to a genie watching him sleep. He waved at his mom and dad as they drove away, chancing another glance at his passenger. "Did something happen?" When Cas tensed, Dean turned to look at him, really look at him, taking in the faint dark circles _(had those always been there?),_ the _(okay, pretty)_ stubble, the turbulent blue of his beautiful eyes. "Was it my dad? Mom? Because they're old fashioned, Cas, it might take them a while to—"

"Your mother is a lovely woman. I enjoyed the chance to meet your family and friends."

Dean heard the hitch in his own quick inhalation. Something wasn't right. He wasn't opposed to begging, he thought, fighting the sensation that Cas was an hourglass and suddenly the sand was flowing too fast. "We'll do it again soon," he said, wincing at the stubborn bite to the words.

"I would like to go home now."

Dean started the car and ignored the many implications behind the offhand phrasing. He wasn't finished, _they_ weren't finished, and by God he was going to prove it to Cas if it was the last thing he did.

He pretended not to see Cas' slim fingers as they rubbed the invisible shackles on his wrists.

…

Dean had dinner alone, Cas tersely claiming he wasn't hungry. Then he watched two sitcoms, a documentary about women who murdered their spouses, and the local nightly news.

Cas never reappeared.

He showered alone, letting the pounding pressure of the showerhead work the tenseness from his shoulders. He had been formulating a plan to seduce the genie for what felt like forever, but every time he thought he was ready, Cas derailed him with a sultry look or naked body slam, flipping the switch on Dean's downstairs brain too fast for him to ever hope to catch up.

Maybe he should just do it.

He soaped his hair again, thinking, trying to imagine the genie's reaction if he just walked up to him and started kissing him. Peeled _his_ clothes off for a change, but not quick and violent; no, he would do it nice and slow, a stark reminder maybe of their differences. He knew Cas wanted him; hell, no one had ever wanted Dean to be as…_satisfied _as Cas did, and that had to mean something.

Right?

He shivered in anticipation and a smattering of nerves. "Nut up, Winchester," he muttered, hastily drying off.

In his bedroom, Cas was at the window, staring out at the darkness.

The edges of Dean's confidence crumbled when he didn't so much as acknowledge his presence, but he took a deep breath, his inner monologue continuing an impromptu pep talk. "So are you going to tell me why you're avoiding me?"

_Oh that's just great, Winchester. Pick a fight. That's super romantic._

"I am not avoiding you. You have known where I was at all times."

Dean stared at the genie's stiff back, softening. "That's not the same thing, and you know it," he murmured, crossing to stand behind him and breathing deep. _Warm, spicy…cardamom and cinnamon and coffee—_

Cas turned abruptly around. "I will remain in the living area for the remainder of the evening, so that you may sleep."

Dean grabbed his wrist when he tried to walk away. "Not so fast." He could feel it now, the genie's nerves spiking hot and bright, adding an interesting layer of tension to the current of electricity running between them.

Cas met his gaze coolly. "You achieved little rest last night."

"Ditto," Dean retorted, cocking his head. "You _are_ avoiding me. But that's okay. We're here now." He moved closer, and the genie stepped back, hitting the window sill. "Be still," he muttered, cupping his jaw and lowering his mouth.

He was left with a fistful of smoke and sighed. _Damn._ "Not fair, Cas." He jumped when the genie spoke from just behind him.

"_Genii_," Cas replied drily.

Dean smirked, resting his hip on the sill. "Still. I'm beginning to think you're a big old chicken. Or maybe inexperienced?" he shook his head ruefully. "Maybe you need some reassurance in the finer points." He took a step in the genie's direction. "Let me take the lead tonight." Another step.

"Dean."

"What, Cas?" Dean exhaled slowly. He could smell him again, and he dipped his nose to his neck, breathing him in, wishing like hell he could bottle it. He lightly touched his lips to the pulse point fluttering just beneath the skin.

"Stop."

"Make me," Dean teased, chancing a brush of lips on the sharp curve of his jaw.

Cas wrenched his face up, grip painfully hard on his chin. "Whatever you think is going to happen, will not."

Dean felt his already overheated skin flush hotter, anger surging through him. "And just why the fuck not?" He grabbed the genie's hips and ground them into his own, lids falling to half mast when he finally, _finally, _found an answering hardness there. "C'mon, baby," he whispered, gentling. He rocked their hips together, sweet frissons of pleasure skirting a long his spine. "Don't you want this? Me?"

Cas went rigid. "I cannot."

"Can't or won't?" Dean bit out, the hurt unfurling in his stomach, an acid eating into his already aching bones. Cas' emotionless expression remained the same and Dean wanted to lash out, hurt him, to see _something_ in those eyes besides possession or control. He dropped his hands and stepped away, but Cas didn't reach for him. "Won't then. Fine." He felt strangely detached, as though he was watching himself through a window, or maybe that was his conscience screaming at him to stop before he couldn't turn back. "I can't stand this, Cas." It hurt to say it, and he wanted to clutch at his chest, the ache behind his breastbone piercing and cold. "I can't keep doing this. Waiting for you to—" he swallowed, forcing himself to say it. "I need more than this."

The words hung suspended between them like dust motes dancing in the sunlight, and Dean wondered if this was the thing that would finish him.

"You have only to say the words." Cas' voice had lowered to match the timbre of Dean's, but it was empty. Detached.

Dean felt a piece of himself splinter off and float away; he wondered how long before it was back, stabbing him with the bitter sharpness of loss. "I," he licked his lips, face hot. His hears were ringing and he longed to go back, turn around and restart this wretched day, figure out where he, Dean Winchester, had managed to fuck up yet another good thing.

He thought of the day Sammy had banished Cas to the book, how angry the genie had been, but how there had been hurt there too, before he was letting Dean in, when it was about the strangely shifting power dynamics between them and Dean was just trying to hold on. He should have kissed him then, he had wasted so much time, and the wish was nearly past his lips before he caught it, no, _no,_ that wasn't what he wanted, what he would wish for.

Losing Cas felt like it would rip him apart, like something he might never recover from, but overarching all of that was the deep-seated need for Cas to be happy and at peace.

"Castiel. I wish—"

"Dean, don't."

For the first time, Dean saw a crack in the stony exterior, and he rushed to finish quickly, afraid of what he might do if he didn't. "I wish for your heart's desire." His voice was steady, much calmer than he felt, because inside he was quaking from an intense melancholy, because he was going to lose. He tried to burn Cas' beautiful, familiar face into his memory, before it was gone.

As the silence stretched between them, unchanged and unbroken, Dean exhaled the breath he had been holding. "Why didn't it work?"

The patter of tiny feet startled him and he spun around, eyes widening when a little girl rounded the doorway, crying, "Daddy!" before launching herself at him.

He caught her on instinct and she squeezed his neck with two perfect, tiny arms, blonde curls tickling his nose. When she sat back on his arm, her little bottom dangling backward with all the trust in the world, she wrinkled her nose and tilted her head in a gesture so like Cas, Dean had to swallow twice to force down the lump in his throat. "Do you want pancakes, daddy?"

"Cas?" Dean's voice was husky, shaking.

"Pancakes sound perfect," Cas said softly, taking the little girl from Dean and holding her close. He stopped at the door, meeting Dean's eyes for the first time. They were warm, caressing his face with something Dean wasn't sure he knew how to read. "Are you coming?"

His head swimming with confusion, Dean nodded, afraid to break the spell, unsure of what was real. In the hallway he stopped; the walls were different, a paler shade of beige filled with family photos, a baby girl, he and Cas… Then he saw a name on the door at the end of the hall—Sam's bedroom—a pink and white wooden plaque, painted in swirling letters. _Alyssa_.

Cas was laughing in the kitchen, cabinet doors slamming. Dean forced himself to follow the happy sound, but when he got there he found he couldn't enter, needed another moment to catch his breath, and he leaned against the kitchen doorway to watch the proceedings. The little girl, Alyssa, sat on the counter beside the sink, swinging her legs, sucking a cherry popsicle between her rosebud lips.

Dean's heart twisted hard with a longing deeper than any he had ever known. He found his voice. "You're going to spoil her dinner."

Cas smiled over his shoulder, a crisp white apron around his hips. "Just this once."

Cautious, Dean crossed the kitchen, smiling at the girl—his _daughter_, his heart sang—stopping behind Cas and wrapping his arms around his waist, mimicking his earlier pose to nose at the dark curls on his neck, trying to remember how to breathe.

"Daddy, push me on the swing."

When he looked up, Alyssa was holding out her arms. He kissed the back of Cas' neck and squeezed him hard before stepping toward his daughter, deciding not to worry about the how or why and embrace whatever this was, for however long he got to have it.

…

It was a perfect day.

Pancakes for dinner, followed by a bath to rid the chatty little girl of syrup in places syrup was never meant to go, then a nighttime visit to the park, where the weather was gorgeous and the stars were plentiful.

When it was bedtime, Alyssa handed him a stack of books, Cas rocking her in a pristine white rocker while Dean read, before they tucked her sleepy head beneath a pink ruffled comforter, and Dean told her that he loved her, far too many times.

"How long?" he whispered, watching her little chest rise and fall. She looked so much like his mother it hurt.

"Until dawn."

Dean found he couldn't leave, couldn't imagine missing one second of this, so they sat on the floor of her room, backs against the louvered closet doors, Dean reaching across the carpet for a hand that was already reaching back.

He didn't want to fall asleep, didn't mean to, but the soft light of dawn woke him just the same. He blinked sleepily, head pillowed on Cas' lap on the floor of his bedroom, and found the genie watching him with solemn eyes.

Dean surged upward, Cas meeting him halfway, mouths colliding, desperate, achingly wet kisses echoing endless days of longing, hours of frustration, and more, more buried underneath all the things that Dean had never found the courage to say.

Cas pushed him to the floor, fitting Dean's body into the curves of his own so easily, it was like they had always been together, like they were that perfect family with a little girl and a beautiful life, and Dean clung to it, clung to Cas, willing it to be true, even if just for the moment, for _this_ moment.

"Dean," Cas whispered, kissing him gently, cradling his face in his palms. "Dean."

And then he was fading, transparent, and Dean grabbed for him, hands falling helplessly, terrifyingly empty as Cas dissolved before his eyes until he was only a glimmer, his last words punching a hole in Dean's chest

_"You should have wished—" _before vanishing entirely.


	18. Chapter 18

"Cas?" Dean scrambled to his feet, heart pounding. "Cas!" He spun around, grabbing frantically at his hair. He tugged, hard, but the pain did nothing to ground him, fear and dread clogging his throat.

"Dean?" Sam's voice from the hall was muffled. "Everything all right?"

Dean flung open the door but found he couldn't speak.

"Dean." Sam grabbed him, alarmed at the wild look in his eyes. "What happened? Where's Cas?"

"He's gone." Dean realized he was clutching at his chest, as though he could somehow hold his heart together, even as it shattered. "He was here, he was right here and then he—he faded and—" he gritted his teeth. "Cas!" He glared at the ceiling, willing the genie to appear.

"Hold on, hold on," Sam soothed, giving him a firm shake. "He can't be gone, that doesn't make any sense. What were you doing? Tell me exactly what happened."

Sam's calm, measured sentences steadied Dean him, and Dean inhaled deeply before nodding. "I made a wish." He knew his hold on his emotions was tenuous and it crumbled fast under the weight of that admission, the hours he had spent as a family with Cas and the little girl battering him, too real, so incredibly precious. "I—" he bit his cheek to stifle the hot wetness behind his lids. "I wished for his heart's desire."

Sam's face was grim. "Where's the book?"

Dean jerked. _The book._ "The living room." But Sam was already striding down the hall and Dean followed, heart still throbbing in time to Cas' name. _Cas Cas Cas Cas._

Sam blanched when he fanned the pages.

"What?" The room seemed off, the axis wrong, and Dean wondered if he was going to pass out. "Sam. What is it?"

"It's," Sam fanned the pages again before opening the book to Dean. "It's blank."

…

Missouri walked through the house, a lit candle in hand.

Dean paced behind the couch, chewing a hangnail and wincing when he broke skin. He sucked at the sting and shifted his weight, impatient. "Missouri—"

She cut him off with a glare. She paused in front of the fireplace, expression wary, before reaching behind the photos to retrieve the cornhusk doll she had placed there when they had first summoned her to bless the house.

When she held it up, the sun caught on the gold pendant around its neck.

It was the charm Dean had found buried in the dirt in a back alley in Zanzibar.

"Where did this come from?" she asked, unwinding the cord from the doll.

"I've never seen it before," Sam said coming closer to peer at the necklace.

Dean swallowed against the lump in his throat, remembering the genie's handsome, irritated expression on a long ago morning, the way he had wrapped the dark silk around a fingertip, refusing to touch the gold. "I found it in Africa." He had taken the charm off weeks ago, because he had grown tired of Cas moodily staring at it every time he stripped him naked. He hadn't given it much thought since. "I kind of forgot about it."

Missouri looked at him sharply. "But did you put it _here_?" When Dean shook his head, she pursed her lips. "Well, there's a twist."

"What is it?" Sam asked, torn between holding his brother up—Dean looked about two seconds from falling over in a heap—and barreling ahead, ripping the Band-Aid off whatever terrible outcome he suspected Missouri was going to hand them.

Missouri fingered the cord, peering carefully at the carved gold face. "I'm not sure," she murmured. "We're gonna need some help."

"What's the doll, Missouri?" Dean's voice was husky. In all the weeks Cas had been with him, a strange undercurrent of energy had flowed through his veins, enveloping him, a supercharged awareness of an otherworldly being in his midst.

He could only feel emptiness now.

"A protection ward," she answered, watching him thoughtfully. "Although, I don't know as it worked."

"Because I didn't need protection." He rubbed his eyes tiredly.

Missouri shrugged and swung the necklace in Dean's direction. "Maybe you didn't, maybe you did, but in the end, I wasn't the one who gave it."

Dean caught the cord. He tried to remember what Cas had said, that first morning. "He said this protected the wearer."

"From what?" Sam frowned, turning to grab a different book from the coffee table, then another. "From what…" he muttered again, scanning the table of contents and walking toward the kitchen.

"Don't get too comfortable, Samuel. We need to go."

"Go?" Dean reached for the back of the couch. "I'm not leaving here without Cas, Missouri."

"_Cas_ ain't here, boy," Missouri said softly. "In case you hadn't noticed, your genie is no longer of this earth."

"Stop."

"Now I don't pretend to know what you did, or what in Sam hell you wished for—"

"Stop!" The seam at the back of the couch ripped under Dean's grip.

"Dean," Sam pleaded. "Let her finish."

Missouri put the doll in her handbag and set it on the floor, her dark face filled with regret. When she opened her arms, Dean didn't hesitate but let her fold him up, and he was ten years old again, waking from a nightmare.

"He's gone, but he left you something. A clue," Missouri whispered in his ear. "Now let's go figure out what that means."

Dean breathed her familiar scent and willed Cas to hang on.

…

The psychic whistled, low. "Impressive," she murmured, giving Dean the onceover. She walked to her bookcase, one long, dark, red nail grazing the ancient cloth covers, stopping on a slim, blue volume. "I thought he was a myth."

Dean glanced at Sam who shrugged. Neither he nor Sam had ever heard of Pamela Barnes, although Missouri insisted if anyone could help them figure out what had happened, she could. "What do you mean?"

Pamela slid the book across the table. "Your genie left his mark in the lore." She tapped the dusty cover. "The cartoon version you're familiar with was…shall we say, heavily edited?"

Dean ignored her flippant smile and the way her eyes lingered when they skimmed his body. He gritted his teeth. "I'm just here to get him back."

Her laugh was dark, sultry. "It's not that easy, beautiful."

Sam interrupted before Dean snapped. "Pamela, we need your help, and I'm guessing we don't have a lot of time."

She shrugged. "Yes, and no." She flipped open the cover on the book. "Time is…fluid in other dimensions. What is a minute here, may be an hour, a year somewhere else."

_Dimensions._ Dean tried to wrap his mind around this conversation, around the implications of what he was hearing. "Where is he?"

"I don't know." Her tone was flat, but her eyes still held a hint of kindness, and Sam latched onto that.

"Tell us about Cas. What you know."

She laughed and the hollow sound filled the dark sitting room. The décor had been chosen to meet her clients' expectations, and that meant dark wood and deep red carpets, velvet upholstery and expansive candlelight. "Castiel. He has been known by many names, but how fitting that he gave an angel's name for your angel face." She brushed a finger down the side of Dean's jaw.

"Give us something or we're leaving," Dean spat.

She dropped her hand. "He was human once, a shepherd." Her eyes fell on the ornate candelabra in the center of the table, the flickering flames holding her gaze. "Legend speaks of a great plague that swept the land. It decimated entire villages, wiping out first the old and the weak, and then the young, claiming all souls, insidious, endless." She looked at Dean. "Your Castiel's family fell victim, and desperate, he prayed to Allah to save them. But Allah didn't come. Unwilling to accept their fate, he took his wife and child and fled into the desert, and there he found their salvation."

"A djinn," Sam murmured.

"Mmm," Pamela agreed, watching Dean carefully. "But not just any djinn. Unbeknownst to Castiel, he had encountered a being so rare and powerful as to rival the devil himself. Iblis."

"Iblis? As in…Satan?" Sam chewed on his bottom lip. "Although some would argue against that designation."

"Some would, yes." Pamela shrugged. "For Castiel, it didn't matter. He offered his life in exchange for his family's, and Iblis agreed."

"He sacrificed himself." Dean thought of a single perfect day, and Cas flipping pancakes to make their baby girl laugh.

"Yes."

"Bless his soul," Missouri murmured.

"Did it work?" Dean was tired of this; tired of the psychic's drawn out storytelling, tired of the sad way Sam was watching him, tired of the empty nothing he could feel in the space where Cas used to be.

"For whom?" Pamela quipped, but she sobered quickly at Dean's black look. "No. Castiel was shifted, swept into Iblis' army of whisperers, forced to watch from the beyond as his wife and child perished in the desert, alone and without his protection."

"Oh my God." Sam glanced worriedly at Dean. "It's a miracle Cas didn't become a monster."

"Oh make no mistake; he was. Until five minutes ago I would have counted him among the most feared warriors of the dark." Pamela pushed the book in Sam's direction, since Dean had thus far refused to touch it. "Take it for your collection."

Sam didn't bother asking how she knew about his books, and tucked it under his arm.

"He wasn't a monster," Dean murmured. "He was—" He stopped and looked away.

Pamela met Sam's eyes over the table. "Castiel spent centuries twisting people's desires, trying to break free. He has been vengeful, deceitful, manipulative and cunning. He has taken great pleasure in bringing every master who found himself unlucky enough to possess him, to his knees. Your brother should be dead."

"Well I'm not, am I?" Dean snapped.

"No. You're not. Which is in and of itself a great mystery to me. The whisperers feed off of the souls of the living, Dean. They entice them with their basest desires. Food. Drink." She smiled at him. "Sex. Then, in the afterglow, they feed. Very few people survive."

Sam remembered the bruising on Dean's neck, his own suspicions. "But they _can_ grant wishes."

"Eh." Pamela's hand wavered over the table. "That is where the debate rages on. Few have been in possession of a djinn with Castiel's power long enough to test that theory, and fewer still live to tell the tale. What I _can_ tell you is that they alter perception, change their host's reality. Make them do thing they wouldn't otherwise do. They dangle the world, bartering for their soul. Beyond that?" She shrugged. "I have no idea."

"But what do _you_ believe?" Sam could see Pamela was hedging, holding something back.

She looked at him evenly. "My mentor came into possession of a djinn when he was young. They became close friends and developed a unique relationship, one that served them well until he was gone." She paused and glanced at Dean. "At a nice, ripe old age."

Dean laughed darkly. "Is that supposed to make me feel better? That I'm one of the lucky ones?"

"I don't know, are you?" Her voice was sharp.

Dean started. "What are you trying to imply?"

"What exactly did you wish for, Dean?"

Dean glanced at Sam. They hadn't told Pamela everything, because to do so would reveal more than Dean was willing to give a total stranger.

"Will it help?" Sam asked quietly.

"My mentor believed djinn _could_ grant wishes, but that most are beings too filled with trickery and deceit to ever actually do so. Good little soldiers, completing Satan's mission, to build an army that would one day inherit the Earth." She placed a hand on Dean's arm. "Djinn are forbidden from granting a wish leading to their own self-fulfillment. To do so goes against the very reason for their existence. They are not intended to have free will. They do not die. The only ones who have ever escaped the imprisonment of the _genii _did so at the hands of a master who released them from their bonds."

"And how did they do that?" Missouri had been a silent observer until now, and there was a bite of impatience in her tone. She didn't like to see her boy suffer, and Dean was fading fast.

"By taking their bonds." Pamela pursed her lips. "By becoming the thing they possessed. But you. You didn't do that. I need you to tell me what you wished, Dean," she said, voice hardening, her sharp, red nails digging into his skin. "What did you do differently?"

Dean yanked his arm away, understanding dawning. "Your mentor is a djinn, isn't he?" he scoffed. "You lost him to this thing and now you despise it, despise Cas. Well, fuck you," he spat. "You can keep your legend and your bitterness, because I will find a way to get him back. But it won't be at the expense of me or anyone else that I care about. And it won't be to help you." He strode from the room. "Sam, let's go."

Pamela grabbed Sam's arm as he left, shaking her head when he tried to hand her the small, blue book. "I—" she exhaled shakily. "There is only one way. You need another djinn."

Face grim, Sam nodded curtly.

"Please—" she whispered, but Sam followed Dean from the room and never looked back.


	19. Chapter 19

Dean drove too fast, but Sam ignored it, fingering the worn corners of the book.

"He didn't kill people."

Sam glanced at him. "Okay."

"He didn't." Dean's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "He—" he swallowed. "He might have tricked them—you know how he is—but Cas is no killer. He's not." He scowled. "She's lying."

"That's possible."

"What do you mean, _'that's possible'_?" Dean asked irritably. "What's the alternative? That Cas was sucking me dry? That everything—that the past few weeks was him trying to turn me into some kind of a _demon_?"

"I don't believe that," Sam said. "I don't. I think maybe it started out that way, or some version of Pamela's story, but Cas cared about you. I know that, and you know that."

Dean chewed his bottom lip. "You didn't tell her about the protection charm."

"No." Sam shook his head. "I was waiting for you."

"I don't trust her."

"Me either."

Dean relaxed his grip. "Good," he said under his breath. "That's good. You had me worried there for a minute when she started offering you smelly old books."

Sam snorted. "Shut up." He tried to hide his relief; the intensity of Dean's aura had been deafening since Cas disappeared, but it was settling now, edges returning to a smooth summer green.

Dean glanced at him. "Stop reading me."

"I'm not."

"Liar," Dean huffed. "Go on then. Give it your best shot."

Sam rolled his eyes. "It doesn't work like that, Dean," he said testily. "I can't help what I see anymore than you can help stealing the last cream cheese brownie."

"There's no proof I ate the last brownie," Dean grinned.

"Tell that to your tight jeans."

"Whatever. What color am I?"

Sam pursed his lips. "Blue. You've been dark blue since he left."

It had started when they were kids, or at least that's when Sam first mentioned that his mother was covered in gold. Soon other colors followed, associated first with his family and then extending to friends and strangers. To their credit, Mary and John never reprimanded him or tried to stifle the strange development in their youngest son, but they did seek help from one of their best friends.

Missouri Moseley had been struck by lightening when she was fourteen, and when she awoke in the hospital she was different. Her grandmother called it _the gift_; her father called it _income._ They would spend the next ten years traversing the southern plains, setting up shop in tiny towns and strip malls, leaving in the dead of night just ahead of a new round of bill collectors (and sometimes the law). When Missouri's father finally drank his pickup truck right over the guardrail of one Stump Creek, it was the first time since she woke up that she had been caught unaware.

She wasn't cured, as it turned out. But she was free.

She bought a bus ticket as far from Texas as she could afford, and got off in Lawrence, Kansas. There was an angel waiting at the station, blonde and beautiful and surrounded by gold, holding a still-warm apple pie and a four year old, her round little belly hoisting her sundress higher in front than back.

"I dreamed we were going to be good friends," the woman, Mary, said with a wide smile.

Missouri knew she was finally home.

Mary never had another vision, much to her chagrin, but Missouri had always known about Sam. When Mary and John finally brought him to her, she grinned at the little boy, kneeling down to give him a half square of butterscotch blondie and a sloppy kiss to his cheek. "I best be purple, young man."

Sam's eyes had lit up with joy. "Like the bottom of the rainbow Mama Moseley!"

It was Missouri who explained how _regular folk_ didn't understand their special gifts, and taught Sam how to navigate the natural world with a supernatural lens.

It was Missouri who clapped the hardest when he graduated college with honors. (Well, maybe second hardest, after Dean.)

Dean glanced at his brother now, a soft smile still hanging on the edge of his lips as he played with the light blue book in his lap. "What color was Cas?"

Sam chuckled. "Depends on how far he was from you." He watched the houses fly by, becoming smaller and more traditional as they neared their little neighborhood.

"I love him," Dean said quietly.

Sam squeezed the book. "I know."

…

Dean's bedroom door swung open, easy and silent, and the absence of sound set his teeth on edge. Sam had sent him to bed, threatening to sneak a sleeping pill into his coffee if he didn't at least try. They had been researching for hours, trying to find a loophole in the thousands of pages of djinn lore, trying to form a plan.

It was hard to make a plan when you had no idea who or what you were dealing with.

He shut the door behind him and glanced thoughtfully around the room. It looked the same. Miraculous, boring sameness, the room he'd slept in for years.

But it felt different.

He crossed to the window, stopping at the edge of a half-moon of light shining through the filmy curtains. It was beautiful, a perfect night.

If he blinked, he knew he would see smooth skin, the sharp angle of a hip, dark hair, moonlit, soft. He inhaled sharply and closed his eyes, the instinct to lay a hand at his chest strong, almost desperate.

When he looked again, the moonlight was the same, its silvery glow illuminating the floor at the edge of his boot, enticing him, asking him to lie there, inviting him in. Unthinking, he strode to the heavy bed and squatted to grasp the solid wood by the footboard. He pulled.

With a groan, the old bed began to move.

It took him several moments, and not too little effort, or sound, but he had the bed where he wanted it and Sam didn't come to check on him. It was now centered under the window and, somehow, he knew this was its rightful place. The night approved.

The moon winked out from behind a cloud again, bathing the creamy cotton in a pale glow, and Dean hurried to remove his clothes. He lay on the bed, keeping to the right. One hand reached for the opposite pillow and he pulled the cotton tight against his chest. But he would not roll to the middle.

There was only one side in this bed. In all the beds.

He closed his eyes so that he could no longer see the dark tuft of hair on the sheets beside him, or the way night shadows played with a moonlit expanse of torso.

In spite of the piercing pain in his chest, in his gut, he slept.

…

_Dean…_

_Dean, open your eyes. DeanDeanDeanDean…_

Dean shook his head, _no, no no no._ He wouldn't open his eyes. He wouldn't wake up, not yet.

_Hands, warm and solid and so very sure at his waist. _

_Lips, soft and rough press hot open-mouthed kisses down his abdomen, lingering at his bellybutton_. Dean relaxed even as a new kind of tension uncoiled deep within him.

_Thank God_, he thought. _Thank God, you're back, you're here_… It felt familiar, and _right_, and he wished he could see him, _see Cas_; but he was too afraid to voice this wish, or any wish, even in his head, for fear it would destroy them again, that it would end, be the last time, the last dream. That speaking it would make it untrue. That he didn't deserve this, that he had never deserved any of it. A thought flitted through his head, loose and whispering, that maybe Cas was, yet again, somehow skirting the physics of life, the laws of the universe, giving Dean extra, more. Always more.

There was a part of him that understood even one glimpse in the darkness, to confirm the absence of blue, would finally shatter a piece of him that would never be repaired.

He was not ready for that. He would probably never be ready for that.

So he squeezed his eyes tightly closed and ignored the whispered pleas against his ear.

A quiet huff of laughter, so real Dean imagined he could feel the air move the hair at his temple, and then the lips were back in their determined path down his torso. They paused, open, warm against the soft strip of skin at the juncture of his thigh and Dean whimpered, letting the imaginary hands part his thighs, absorbing the tickle of imaginary hair on his stomach, as lips and tongue work their way home.

The moist, wet heat fusing to the head of his cock was almost enough to make him cry out and he bit his lip. He wished, silently, hopelessly, that he could kiss the lips sucking him gently down, down, and then he did cry out, so intense his need.

Dean gripped the sheets beneath him. At some point he had lost all cover in the darkened room, had lain exposed in the filtered light of the window. He felt the sheen of sweat covering him now and dug his heels into the mattress, searching for purchase against the undulating suction. There was none. Those blessed hands and mouth, both soft and rough, pulled him over the edge until he was falling, left shaking, alone and damp in the moonlight.

He thought he heard a sigh as he turned his face into his pillow.

It sounded like his name.

…

Cas blinked rapidly, eyes dry and gritty, squinting, watching for movement, a horizon, although he knew it was futile. There was nothing to see. Nowhere to go. This _was_ nothing. Endless. An eternity of white emptiness, at least if you were lucky.

Cas had never been lucky.

The first pull at his memories was so subtle he almost missed it, wondered if he was dreaming.

The second was excruciating and he might have fallen to his knees.

"Let me in, Castiel," the voice boomed, but he wrapped Dean tighter and fought harder, concentrated louder, knowing it was pointless.

Eventually he would lose.


End file.
